


Jar of Good Things

by fitried



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Between Jean and Marco, College related anxiety, Friends to Lovers, Homophobic Language, M/M, Mental Illness, Mentions of Suicide, Multi, POV Alternating, also rude stepdad, i attempt humour, mentions of past relationships - Freeform, sort of a coffee shop AU but not really, teeeeEEENY erejean, this isnt as sad as it sounds folks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-06
Updated: 2015-10-07
Packaged: 2018-04-25 04:35:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4946914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fitried/pseuds/fitried
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marco Bodt is a small town boy hoping desperately to run away from the monotony in his head, and Jean Kirschtein is your typical rich kid, who tries desperately to love himself by lessening the burden that is his mere existence.<br/>They both have a long, long way to go and a lot to learn, but time is abundant and they are both worth much more than they'd ever guess.<br/>And that's just the serious part.</p><p>Alternatively: <i>YET </i> another College AU. Knock your selves out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Empty Corridors

**Author's Note:**

> So I've never written anything this long before.  
> I wont say this is my first time writing fanfiction, because I've waded in that pool but, believe me; that is an embarrassing journey that we do not want to embark on, for now.  
> This is, however, my first time writing for JeanMarco which is surprising because I love them but also not because I've always been scared to post my work on the internet (I still am).  
> I'm honestly presenting this to you with my heart on my sleeve and I hope you'll enjoy this because I do love writing it and it would be nice to share some of that love and I SWEAR it gets better and I'll be doing my best to update this as frequently as possible.  
> PLEASE hit me up with some feedback, or send me an ask on my tumblr, which is [fitried](http://fitried.tumblr.com/).  
> This fanfic is going to alternate between the POVs of Marco and Jean every chapter, like this one is Marco.  
> (Additionally, I would like to mention that my characters' views are not necessarily my own and not everything in here is 100% right.)  
> Thank you for giving me your time <3

_And we fall through empty corridors,  
And we talk in useless metaphors,  
Only cause we’re lonely._

**Ben Howard - Empty Corridors** |[ **x**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4TWNKhZOlw)|

 

 

 

Marco Bodt has a problem.

Actually, he has several problems.

They’re not the kind of problems you can shrug off soon, mind you: they’re not due projects, broken machines, any headache he can drive away with a solid dose of Aspirin, or a fresh bruise, or any of that sort of thing, really.

They’re the kind of problems that keep you awake for nights at an end, slowly tossing and turning in your sleep and dreading waking up each day. They make you feel like you’re slowly growing numb to all the things you’re meant to smile at, like ice cream trucks and tinsel toys on Christmas and the smell of rain in the evening. They make you feel like you’re surrounded by some terrifying power that keeps you on the verge of drowning, your fingers reaching out for some sort of hold but coming to hold at nothing. Nothing.

 

Paralyzed.

 

Marco doesn’t feel like himself anymore. 

He hasn’t felt like himself for three years. It’s kind of frustrating; really, he’s starting to think this empty shell of a human being is what he truly is. 

He’s always tired, no matter how much he’s slept or worked, and he doesn’t think he feels all the things he should be feeling. It’s difficult to get out of bed in the morning when you can’t think of anything you’d look forward to. He’s not half as charismatic of full of gusto as he once used to be, and people can see it now.

They still think he’s a nice guy and everything, real sweet, total gem, but they’ve started to notice how he’s just stopped doing so many things. He hardly even paints, any more. He used to paint all the time, once.

Marco can’t look at a knife any more without wondering how easy it would be to press it into his abdomen and just, run away from life. This, unfortunately, is not a recent development.

Marco doesn’t think he can make it through life. He doesn’t think he’s got enough talent or resolve for anything, and that little hopeful voice in his head has grown dimmer and dimmer with disuse. The only things it tells him now sound half-hearted, subdued, and meaningless.

Marco doesn’t know what’s wrong.

His mother had insisted, last May, that he go see a psychiatrist. He’d told her then, promised her, that he’s fine now, that it’ll be over, it’s just a small phase, he’ll get over it. 

He’d lied.

They can’t afford the psychiatrist. For god’s sake, they can hardly afford a Christmas tree.

So, Marco does his own thing.

On the good days, the ones when he pets a cute dog on the street or works with Erwin’s charity (god bless that charity), he’ll look up stuff about how to deal his problems himself. 

He’ll go onto online forums and rant a little anonymously, he’ll play silly board games, braid Mina’s hair a new way he’s discovered he can, listen to some pretty music, exercise, go out for a stroll.

He’ll try to fix himself. 

He even keeps this cute little jar in his closet and, if he’s feeling up to it, he’ll write down something nice about the day on a little piece of paper, roll it up and throw it in. There’s a good set of seemingly insignificant memories piled up in there, and Mina thinks it’s fun to shake it sometimes to hear the chits rustle against each other and bounce over the glass. 

It’s this old jar of honey that he decided to keep once the stuff itself was licked away by Mina, and he even put this label around it, it’s his ‘JAR OF GOOD THINGS :DDDD’. It’s got flowers and wonky rainbows and little polka dots scattered over it that Marco drew the day he’d left for his trip to India with Erwin and his team.

However, Mina, with her 7 year old’s knowledge of literally everything,believes strongly that the rainbows are way too stupid for a boy his age and he should probably be drawing, like, books or whatever it is adults like. She disapproves of all the multi-colored polka dots, too, because her brother is good enough at art to draw way cooler things; like spaceships, for instance. Marco clearly doesn’t have any taste.

Marco just giggles and ruffles his half-sister’s messy hair or tickles her until she’s wheezing and panting and punching at him with all her little might.  
See, there isn’t much 7 year olds can do to their 19 year old brothers unless it involves the merciless shredding of paper and pen thefts in bulk from their stationery drawers. A couple of other things, too, but Mina rarely ventures from her usual brand of ‘Annoy the Shit out of Marco’ shenanigans. 

Call it mercy.

She’ll come to him at odd hours of the day, begging him to make her a new drawing, or telling him just how great the clouds look today so he might come out and play tag with her instead of moping around. She’ll make him little macaroni necklaces painted with her favorite pink glitter and force him to wear it all day, all week, if she can. Normally, he complies just to keep her quiet, strutting around the house with a silly pink necklace or sketching her a couple cats or trees tocolor up, but sometimes he gets irritable. Once or twice, he’ll even _yell_ at her.

Marco. The same Marco who is patient and positive and as sweet as the best sort of candy. Marco yells.

Marco, whose thousands of freckles disappear beneath the sort of red his face becomes when he’s angry, whose soft, chocolate, eyes with their flecks of gold, turn to the sort of brown that’s murky, unrelenting and, honestly, _scary_ , when he snaps.

Mina doesn’t cry often, but she _bawls_ when Marco yells. But that’s because she doesn’t know the sort of trouble he gets into when her father finds out its Marco who made her sad. She doesn’t even know the meaning of most of the words he yells at her brother, and neither of them ever tell her when she asks.

She’s only a kid.

When it comes to Marco, she leaves the more _grown up_ parts of thinking to his rather dynamic friend duo, Connie and Sasha, though they’re not very good at it, really. 

They just drag Marco out by his arms every once in a while and take him to the nearest café so they can tell him all about their week and how Connie did this **sick** flip on his skateboard or how Sasha managed to down two entire large pizzas in one sitting. Sometimes they’ll go to the park and make fun of the little kids as Marco chuckles or tells them off good-naturedly.

Marco hasn’t gotten better in three years, but Connie and Sasha stick around. They come around every so often and do their thing just so Marco knows there’s still people who care for him and will go out of their way to see him happy.

 

He knows.

 

That’s why he tries.

That’s part of why he’s sat with his sketch pad on his thighs in the middle of Jinae Park¬¬, lips pursed and pencil hanging loosely from his fingers as he stares at Sasha.

“How long do you think you can hold that pose?” he asks her, cocking his head to the side and trying to figure out _how_ exactly she’s kept this up for more than a minute already.

She scoffs, jutting her pointy chin in the air and letting her chest inflate some more “I’ll be fine, ‘s long as Connie doesn’t finish those chips.”

Connie, who is sat beside Marco on the bench, makes an impressively unattractive sound, unable to form actual sentences with a full mouth but choosing instead to draw his eyebrows together in a way that makes him look like he’s defied Darwin and become a Neanderthal.

“I don’t know how you can do that to your face but don’t do it again.”, says Sasha, ushering Marco to get on with his sketching so she can rest her limbs. She’s stood on one leg, one hand on her hip and the other stretched away from her, wild chestnut hair thrown around her forehead in strands as it slips slowly out of the little pin she has it pulled up in. She’s like a scrawny Superwoman.

Marco huffs and sets to work again, wincing at how amateur his lines still look despite years of practice. But he does it anyway; pencil scratches against paper and the stick figure of Sasha turns steadily into the actual thing, however shoddy it looks. Of course, Sasha ends up having to keep relaxing and getting back her strength every so often, but she remains rather quiet all throughout. He makes the most of her cooperation to draw her loose fitting tank top, her food stained khakis and the way her large eyes glint with mischief, and he draws her hands.

Hey, at least he’s still good at drawing those.

Next to him, Connie hums appreciatively, gesturing at Sasha to come see once Marco’s done.Now, Marco’s never been too proud of anything he does, which is why not many people even _know_ he can draw and the few that do have hardly ever gone past seeing maybe two or three old sketches. 

These two, however, have shamelessly raided all his drawers and cupboards and tables for his work. They know about how he once sketched just Nac Tius every day, about the little drawings of Mina, or those of his mom bent over her work, the drawings of all his friends from back when he bothered to actively socialize and even that one really rough one of his step-dad with his shoulders dropped and his fingers curled around the neck of a bottle of alcohol as he scowls towards him. They know, they’ve seen all of those, might as well see this one in his hands right now.

So he lifts up his book to level it with Sasha’s gaze. Her doe eyes go wide and her mouth falls into an ‘O’ as she plucks it from his grip and scrutinizes it at different angles and distances from her face.

“Marco, my boy, this is some QUALITY SHIT.” She muses, eyes still stuck to the paper, “I am going to take this and I will pay you if you want but you cannot convince me otherwise.”

Marco chuckles dryly, rubbing the back of his neck a little with his hand and turning to the ground, again.

“It’s not all that good, Sash.” he says.

“BUT IT IS, MARCO.” Connie tugs the sketchpad away from his girlfriend and looks upon the work like he’s some professional art critic. He then turns to Marco and stares at him expectantly, “Do one of me.”

He pauses for a second to turn away from Marco and Sasha, as if on the verge of Eureka, and has an almost manic expression on his face when he looks back at them.

“Do it now. I feel in the zone.” He states suddenly, jumping upright with his hands on his hips and bald head held astonishingly high for his rather small height.

“And why is it that it’s _you_ who must be in the zone and not _me_ , who just so happens to be the one doing any actual work, here.”, retorts Marco, cocking his eyebrows.

Connie snorts, bending down on one knee before Marco and resting his palms upon the brunet’s thigh with an exaggerated tenderness in his eyes.

“Marco...my love.”

“Connie, no.”

“My beloved, my dear, the moon in my sky, the bacon to my eggs, the –“

“Connie you do this every time.”

“-sunshine in my morning, the color in my sky, the spring to my Springer-’’

“Connie, I don’t even know what that means.”

“-the air in my lungs, my sight for sore eyes, my-“

“FINE. I’ll do it.” moans Marco, throwing his hands up in surrender as Connie’s face contorts into what must be the most smug expression he’s ever seen. There is something about this that makes Marco feel like this isn’t a good idea but saying no to that pile of raw energy isn’t a great move either.

Connie struts before him and Sasha purposefully, looks towards them for a second with his hands on his hips, considering, and then, he _twists his arms around each other almost satanically_. But he isn’t done just yet. To complete the pose, he crosses his legs and juts his chin upwards, eyebrows knitted in concentration. His flexibility is truly astounding, if not highly disturbing.

Sasha shrugs, like seeing her boyfriend turn into rubber is the most natural thing in the world, and turns all her attention to the bag of chips he had left behind.  
Marco doesn’t think Connie could’ve come up with a more challenging-to-draw pose if he was paid to do it.

“Why are you doing this to me, Connie.” he whines.

“I can’t hold this shit for long, Marco, get down to business.”

“Connie, you are currently the human equivalent of what happens to your earphone cords when you keep them in your pocket for too long.”

“It’s gonna be one for the wall, buddy, one for the wall.”

Marco sighs in defeat, slumping his head down a little, letting his dark locks fall onto his forehead, he straightens up, mutters a “right, so…” to no one in particular, and tries his best to draw out all the proportions. Easier said than done, Connie has really upped his twisting game. There’s _no way_ Marco can actually get a right looking drawing of this, because Connie himself looks _in no way_ right.

But Sasha’s staring at him intently, and Connie seems to really be struggling out there, so he huffs some more and doodles away. He tries to rush it a little, knowing that his friend will end up falling on his face if he holds that position for long, and that thrice damned idiot would prefer that to resting any day.

Sure enough, the final sketch looks like an extract from a Necromancy book. Holy shit, Connie.

“All we need is candles and, preferably, an Ouija board.”

“What’s that, Marco? You done yet?”

“Yes, but –“

“HOLD THAT.” Connie jumps in the air, all his the knots he had his hands and feet in coming undone as he hops towards Marco with his eyes glinting like it’s Christmas, “SHOW ME.”, he orders. He looks so damn excited, like all his life has lead up to this moment and that _finally_ , after all these years, he has finally been drawn the way he wishes to be remembered. Marco really wouldn’t put it past Connie to want a memorial that looked like that.

The boy is literally bounding with joy when he sees the drawing. He even throws in the most triumphant “HA!” and pats Marco on the shoulder so hard, he almost falls head first into the grass. Connie wastes no time, he gets straight down to asking what the best way to frame it would be; the best colors, if he should give it any padding, if the frame should be fancy or plain and where he should put it up so it attracts most attention from anyone who drops by his house.

”I really think I should put a light above it, you know? Like a spotlight. And I think I’ll keep it on that wall beside the stairs? You know the one you see when you just walk in and wouldn’t that be GREAT because EVERYONE EVER would get to see it, yeah? BUT, hey, what if I put it on my….”

Marco zones out after about 7 seconds, he doesn’t even bother trying to tell his friend that the drawing is terrible because Connie will insist otherwise and put it up anyway. Instead, he cups his face in his hands and rests his elbows upon his knees and laughs along when he thinks he’s supposed to. 

 

 

Maybe it’s not so bad a life if you’ve got friends like these.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

“Say, Marco.” a nasally, Southern, drawl pierces the silence of the sitting room. Two adults sit facing each other on opposing sofa chairs; one of them struggles to appear at least somewhat neutral, and the other sits with his legs spread wide apart, an empty bottle of vodka between them. The dim orange light illuminates the older man’s features rather eerily; throwing shadows over his eyes and making him seem somewhat ghostly. A man who was once handsome is now nothing more than a bulging fool with an overgrown stubble, his deep set grey eyes glazed over in his drunk stupor and his hooked nose casting a long shadow over his mouth.

“Have you gotten into that college yet?” he asks, leaning forward so the light bounces off his balding head.

Marco’s mother had left the room with Mina a few minutes ago, after her husband had told her he wished to speak to Marco alone. He’d come home late and drunk, as usual, with the scent of alcohol shrouding him like a cloak when he dumped his briefcase on the table and stayed in any one place for longer than a second. Right now, it’s overpowering. 

Marco has become good at hiding his fear. There was a time when he’d have been trembling just from the look in his step-father’s eyes, but now he can so much as match it. Albeit with his fingers fisted in his shirt, hidden beneath folded arms so the man before him won’t see how they clench a little more with every word he says.

“They haven’t gotten back to me, yet.” Despite his self-control, he’s surprised he doesn’t stutter or stumble over his words.

“Why’s that? They rejecting you? Thought you said your application was good, huh? We’re letting you do your bloody arts and you can’t even get in anywhere?” his step dads voice has risen, now, the atmosphere in the room is tense enough to almost see the invisible strings that hold it together.

“It’s not like that, Peter.”, says Marco, with his nails digging into his sides, “They’re gonna tell us soon. They normally tell you around the last week of March or–’’ 

“You better get in, kid.” 

 

Silence.

 

He doesn’t say much after that. Just sits there staring at Marco’s face like he’s some sort of ugly moss growing upon the stark white walls of their house and lets the silence ring in their ears and doesn’t get up even when it becomes cacophonous. Marco stares right back, of course, but he can feel how the rage and overhanging doom make his eyes prick with tears.

He can still hold it together. He can’t back down. So he sits, trying to will away the tears by telling himself they’d only satisfy Peter more.

“You don’t like me, do you?” the bloated man before him growls, his face scowling up on him.

Marco doesn’t say anything. He just holds himself a little tighter, and he keeps his stance.

“But you’re not one to judge, are you? You’re useless. You earn too little, you do too little, you go off for months to some other country for some goddamn charity when your mother and I could use some of that ourselves and, for fuck’s sake, you’re too fucking scared to even drive. What sort of man are you?”

He still doesn’t respond, and Peter takes it as his cue to continue.

“Oh, that’s right. I know exactly what sort of man you are.” Peter’s expression darkens into one of badly hidden disgust. Oh no. Here it comes. Marco won’t be able to stand it this time, not when he’s already so on edge. 

“You’re a _goddamn_ fag-’’

Marco doesn’t so much as blink when he snarls,” I think that’s enough.”

He can agree with just about anything that Peter says about him, because he’s said it all to himself in the dark of his room too many times to count. But he can’t stand Peter taking jibes at his sexuality, and pilling it as one his step-son’s many defects.

Peter could have been the living embodiment of Marco’s self-hate, if not for that.

Marco’s anger, however, shuts Peter up, and he gapes at the brunet like a goldfish, until he realizes his silence is his defeat.

“Can’t stand my slurs, can you?” he hisses, eyes narrowing to slits, “You’d better get used to them, people like you get them everywhere.”

Marco’s blood boils beneath his skin, but his posture remains stony, fixed.

“Well, maybe, if people like you-’’

“Careful, now. You forget whose house this is.”

That’s it. That’s how Peter ends all his arguments and backs up everything he says.

‘ _It’s my roof you’re living under._ ’, ‘ _It’s me who pays for the bills._ ’ that sort of thing. 

Peter will pick one particular day, whenever he likes,chooses it to make Marco feel like shit, and then he ends it just like this.

Marco used to argue over this, too, but he’s learnt better. Nowadays, he just turns his death glare up a notch and watches Peter wince. He still can’t deal with the intensity of Marco’s anger, but he recovers quickly.

“You better get your shit together, Marco, or you won’t have any money left on you for any of those books you’ll need.”

Marco offers him a curt nod and pushes himself off the chair, trying not to straight out run away or yell some profanities he hasn’t used in a while. Instead, he settles for briskly  
walking towards his room and locking himself inside.

His mother will probably come by, soon, to ask him what had happened and to try to fix the wounds with all she’s got. He’ll lie to her, again, and he’ll pretend the wounds don’t exist at all.

He’s too out of this. There really isn’t anything surprising or new about what his step father said, but it burns so much to know that people aside of himself can see it. He’s pathetic, he’s useless, he can’t do anything right and he just avoids all his responsibilities like they’re toxic, and there’s nothing notable about him, nothing at all.  
He’s not nice enough, not good enough at art, doesn’t have more than two steady friends, and he doesn’t even get out enough to have any sort of impact on strangers.

He’s nobody. He’s nothing.

 

 

He probably isn’t going to get much sleep, tonight.

 

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Marco wakes up to some very _annoying_ vibrating from his bedside.

“Shh.” He murmurs, eyes still heavy with sleep, his head feeling like lead and his throat burning like it’s been clawed at from the inside. His fingers pat around for his phone and slide it towards him whilst it continues to periodically vibrate.

That stuff really seems to be shaking the Earth with its intensity. He’s way too sleep deprived for this shit.

10:13 am, he notes, blinking wearily at the screen. Right. That’s a…okay amount of sleep, sort of, he should be feeling fresh and perky. Should be. Is not.  
8 Messages

_Aw Hell._

His thumb scrambles to quickly unlock the screen and press down upon the notifications, more and more pile up until there’s 12 messages for him to check, all from Sasha.

 **From Sasha Braus:**  
MARCO. CONNIE ND I GT OUR EMAILS FRM GARRISON STATE!!! WE BTH GT IN!!!

 **From Sasha Braus:**  
GT UR ASS UP WE GTTA PARTAYY

 **From Sasha Braus:**  
IM GNNA BUY U CAKE

 **From Sasha Braus:**  
IM GNNA BUY 50 CAKE

 **From Sasha Braus:**  
I GO T INTO GARRISON MARCO.

 **From Sasha Braus:**  
MARCO GT UP OR IM GNNA CME THERE AND DUMP ICE ON UR FRCKLD ASS.

 **From Sasha Braus:**  
MARCO

 **From Sasha Braus:**  
MARCO DON DO THS TO ME I DNT HAVE ENOUGH MONY ON THIS THNG U BUTT.

 **From Sasha Braus:**  
HW MCH R U GOING TO SLEEP THTS IT.

 **From Sasha Braus:**  
marco r u alive.

 **From Sasha Braus:**  
Im wrried im calling u

Before Marco can type out a reply and assure Sasha that he is, if fact and unfortunately, still alive and sort of well, his phone starts singing his ringto-

 

_Oh no._

 

That’s not his ringtone. That is so, _so_ far from his ringtone. That’s the sound of some extremely atrocious 80’s techno music and it fills the room, and Sasha’s icon pops up, with her tongue stuck out at him obnoxiously. Marco is dumbstruck for a moment.

_“We’re no strangers to love, you know the rules and- “_

Marco has hesitated to long. He frantically accepts the call in the brief moment where his composure returns, and just about falls off of the bed in his returned panic.

“SASHA BRAUS”, he yells, not wasting a second, “WHO DID THIS.”

There is a pause at the other end of the line.

“What?”

“YOU RICK ROLLED ME. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN.”

Another pause, static in his ear, and then the sound of Sasha’s laughter. Way too loud and way too happy for his head to understand after having just been shaken awake to the sound of Astley. No-one deserves this. 

Maybe Peter.

Definitely Peter.

Peter deserves to wake up with his feet in cacti.

Fiery cacti.

“MARCO. I just got into college you big goof. PRIORITIES.” She laughs some more and Marco lets his rage dissipate somewhat and focuses instead on the actual news, shuffling in his bed to prop himself up on his elbow and shift the phone to his other ear so he can still snuggle into the duvet.

 

_I’m going to let this temporarily slide. But just temporarily._

 

“Right. College.” He mutters.

Sasha hoots to herself, and Marco, who is undoubtedly happy for his friends, can’t help the building feeling of doubt that fills up in his lungs, along with the post-Astley trauma. What if he’s not getting into Trost University, what if they’re just going to reject him? Was his personal essay too shoddy? His SAT scores were good, right? Everything was enough to get him in, right? When the hell did Sasha change her caller tune on his phone?

“I can’t BELIEVE I actually did it, you know?” Sasha’s voice comes through the receiver and breaks Marco’s stream of self-consciousness and confusion.

He sighs, running his fingers through a clearly fascinating case of bed-hair. “Of course you did, Sash, you’ve been working towards this for the past two years. You two deserve this.”

“Speaking of the two of us; I’m at Connie’s place right now, he’s ACTUALLY crying. Hold on, I’m gonna put you on speaker.”

A lot of rustling is heard, as Sasha moves into whatever room it is that Connie has himself holed up in. The rustling stops and instead, the muffled racket of what would appear to be a bawling child (unless you knew otherwise) is heard.

“Connie?” It’s hard to believe Connie is _this_ excited about his admission but the poor guy had been stressing about his grades so long, he didn’t think he’d get in anywhere. And to get into the college he’d been day dreaming about…Marco can understand Connie Springer of all people getting so emotional. Because, well, first of all: he’s Connie Springer.

“S-S-Sasha t-this is s-s-ssoo unfaairrr.” He cries, his voice still coming through oddly because of the distance from the phone, but heard all the same.

“Our buddy Springles is in shambles, Marco.” Sasha’s voice is far clearer, and much louder and definitely more cheery, “You gotta come here and see this for yourself.”

Connie moans furiously at that, and Marco laughs as heartily as a sleepy man can. Not very heartily.

“Gimme a few.” He mutters, running his fingers through his hair and moving to wriggle out of his duvet, not even bothering to change out of his pajamas first. Nothing Connie and Sasha haven’t seen before, not that the rest of neighbors are going to care either; might as well strut around in his kitten propaganda outfit if he can get away with it. He tries, at least, to flatten out the cowlicks that stick up on his head and huffs when they refuse to budge. There’s not going to be anyone at home, Peter leaves around 7 and his mum gets out two hours later for her shift in the clinic after seeing that Mina gets on her school bus.

Well, there’s no one left to give him hard time.

He slumps through the hallways and into the kitchen, so he can wash away a little of the morning breath with a glass of water. There’s a fluorescent green post it on the rickety old fridge that’s starting to peel off, but it’s going to have to wait. He chugs down some water and heads straight out into the light.

See, the thing about Jinae and its weather is that it is almost always hot. Blazing hot. Except for the winters when it’s too cold to leave without wearing about 7 layers, but Marco is, as Mina says, a ‘furnace of mutant heat powers’ so he can just about last the cold. But not the heat.

So, when he clicks open the door and steps out into the sun from the cool of the house, it’s pretty much how he imagines stepping into hellfire would be.

He shakes his head furiously and shields his eyes from the sun with his hand, breaking into a run to get three homes across to Connie’s place. 

Every house in this neighborhood looks like it’s a wind blow away from destruction, and that probably is the case, and Connie’s is no exception. It’s small, the wood on the porch looks decayed, the bright pink mail box is rusty and paint on the fence is peeling, but the one blessing is the perfectly kept garden with its multi-colored flowers and several of those pretty trees that go white when it gets chilly.

Connie turned out to be a gardening enthusiast two years ago when Sasha gifted him a tiny cactus for Christmas and he just couldn’t stop fussing over it. Things escalated soon after Connie expanded his cacti collection to 20, when he convinced his two mothers to start buying several trees and shrubs for the garden. Things always escalate, with Connie. That’s exactly why he’s crying buckets over an acceptance letter somewhere in this old place of his.

Marco exhales and walks over to ring the bell, hoping Connie’s parents aren’t here to see him exhibit his passion for cats with his attire and that it’s Sasha who opens the door, but the stars really don’t seem to have aligned in his favor because the face that greets him definitely isn’t Sasha’s.

“Marco! You must be here to –“ Aisha Springer’s pretty face switches from welcoming to extremely questioning as her eyes travel to his shirt, but she doesn’t ask about it as he would’ve expected: having Connie as a son must do that much to a person, “You, uh, must be here to see your friends. Um. They’re both in the guest room, don’t mind the dust up there, will you? Nice, um, nice pajamas.” she nods once towards the staircase to his left and Marco, with a face burning red, responds with a stiff nod of his own before sprinting away.

Who knows what Aisha thinks of him, now? Hey, at least Connie’s other mom thinks Marco’s cool.

No point dwelling on that, he has a Distressed Connie to attend to. The bawling he’d heard over the phone seems to be more subdued now, at least through the door. He doesn’t hear Sasha comforting her boyfriend, however, until he gently pushes the door open.

“There, there, Connie, it’s okay.”she says to him as he sobs, her back to Marco, one hand on her boyfriend’s dark bald head and the other shifting around in mid-air trying to figure out someplace else it should go, “You’re not dreaming, it’s alright.”

Connie lays eagle spread on the floor, just a couple inches away from the bed in his boxers and a Beatle’s shirt that fits him about as well as a large bed-sheet, sobbing at the roof. It looks like he was trying to make it to the mattress, but failed on the way and decided instead to fall upon the floor.

“Sasha!” Marco calls, and she whips her head back and grins wildly, letting go of Connie to envelope Marco in a hug that seems much too strong coming from her lean frame.

“Marco, m’boy!” she howls from his shoulder, “Help me out here, will ya?”

It’s not much of a request, she grabs him by the arm and pulls him forward, letting go of him once he’s set by Connie’s side. She then maneuvers around so she’s stood opposite to Marco and bends down to grab Connie’s arm from the shoulder, preparing to prop him up against the bed, and looks up with her eyebrows raised towards her still standing friend.

“Get at it.”, she orders, jutting her chin up towards him and tugging.

Connie seems pretty uncooperative, he doesn’t even budge to help with the lifting and he seems to flop down even more when Marco grabs him and pulls him up along with Sasha. His howling has lessened, though, and he even manages to spare his two friends a couple glances in between breaths.

They manage, together, to set him upright and the position helps calm him down significantly because he’s finally found himself able to speak.

“I-I can’t BELIEVE IT.”, he moans, slapping his cheeks, “I’m like a- a damn college kid. Fucking. Wow.”

“That’s right, pal.” Marco sits next to Connie with his legs folded beneath him, running his palms up and down his thighs and constantly pushing the bangs off his face. It’s weird, everything’s going just fine but he’s feeling heavy again, droopy and somehow exhausted, like a flat tire or something. Like something’s weighing him down to the ground with a chokehold on his neck.

Maybe it’s because he wishes he shared some semblance of Connie’s feelings towards college, or maybe it’s him wishing wouldn’t have to worry about it himself. Maybe he wishes he had a dream of his own that he could hold on to as long as his friends held on to theirs, that he didn’t lose interest within a couple months or that he didn’t have to let it go because his family couldn’t afford it. 

Marco helps people. It’s his thing, he’s the nice guy, the guy that everyone seems to like, or he was, once. He doesn’t hold grudges, he doesn’t curse at rude strangers on early mornings, he watches sappy movies with ridiculously happy endings and doesn’t complain about them, and he’ll never yell at you if you call him at four in the morning to talk about the latest political issue that’s been bothering you, because he’d be genuinely happy you chose him. He’s nice. It’s not like him to be jealous of someone, to feel like this when he looks at his best friend being this incredibly happy.

But Marco has never cried with happiness his entire life.

He tries to dismiss all the negativity, “You should two really be celebrating this, Connie.” he says, letting his hand rest on Connie’s shoulder.

Connie sniffs, nodding vacantly with his eyes set fiercely on the corridor.

“Con, we should go out to that rad diner I was telling you about. Or we could go to that amusement park in the outskirts! We could hop on that mad rollercoaster and try that new 4D thing they’ve got with some Titan fighting or something, that sounds cool! The three of us!” Sasha waves her arm elaborately and laughs, Connie just nods some more, his gaze staring a thousand miles away. Sasha really doesn’t seem to mind, she’s far too into her own daydreams herself.

She rants on about the many things they could do and the kind of food they’d eat, sometimes correcting herself and abandoning several ideas midway in preference of another.  
Marco, however, is left in reality to focus on the nearing scent of cookies and the familiar creak of the stairs.

”We could do BOTH things at the same day!” says Sasha, yet oblivious, somehow, to the footsteps, “The diner AND THE PARK! IT’S OUR DAY!! I mean I know we’ve still got high school to finish and there’s still those goddamn-“

As he suspected, Aisha comes to stand before them, leaning against the doorframe with a plate of the roundest and most visually appetizing cookies Marco has ever seen. That might just be his hungry stomach talking.

Sasha snaps into full attention to his side, stopping midway in her sentence, and her sudden quiet forces Connie to come to his senses as well.

Aisha chuckles at their desperate faces, and looks towards Sasha specifically “So if Con-bun is done being an emotional wreck…”

“Don’t call me that, mom!”

“Of course not, you’re a grown man now! My kid’s achieving his dreams, it’s the best thing, really.” She holds the plate out forward and it takes Sasha a record second to take it from her and be sat back down beside Connie with two of them stuffed in her mouth already.

Connie scoffs at his mother but digs right into the treats, Marco ignores the pang in his chest at the look of pride for her son in her eyes in favor of being polite to redeem himself after the kitten pajamas.

“Aisha, why don’t you share them with us?” he offers, rubbing the back of his neck and trying to send her a look that pleads for her to forgive his odd taste in fashion. There’s just something about mothers and their evident mind reading, because she seems to pick up on the message instantly and smiles gently.

She accepts, however, and sits in front of them with her legs crossed and waits patiently until Connie finally offers her a cookie. Marco himself had picked a couple out just in case the disastrous duo finished the lot off before he could go for a second. 

And, damn, is he glad he did; they’re crumbly and crisp and just _perfectly_ sweet.

“Aisha, these cookies are FANTASTIC.” he moans, lifting his free hand in a double thumbs up. Aisha sniggers and smiles, turning to Connie with a look so fond you might actually believe her son’s an angel. 

“Hey, Marco,” Sasha says in between inhaling cookies, “You remember Hannah? That girl who used to live here two years back?”

Marco turns to Sasha and ponders the name for a few seconds, until he finds a face to match it; tiny girl with ginger hair, even frecklier than him, “Yeah, yeah I do. What about Hannah?”

“Well, she applied to Trost University, too. You applied there, didn’t you?” She says, grinning appreciatively at Aisha when she finishes the cookie in her hand, and reaching for another.

“I did. It’s one of the more affordable Universities around. Did she get in?” Marco asks, hesitantly, as snatches a few more treats from the plate for himself, which somehow still has a couple to spare, and brings his knees up to his chest and hugs them close with his arms.

“Yeah! She texted me this morning and she says they got back to her yesterday afternoon-“ Marco freezes up, “- and they told her she’s got in. Have you gotten your email yet, Marco?”

He feels his throat go dry, he hugs his knees a little tighter.

“Um…not yet, I think.” he mutters, almost to himself, “I haven’t checked for two days. I- I’m not sure.” 

Aisha senses his discomfort immediately and brings a hand to rest on his knee, “I’m sure they’ll accept you, kid.” she assures.

Her comforting reminds him of his mother’s last night, how hollow it had made him feel, and the lump in his throat grows. He swallows. He nods.

“How ‘bout we bring the laptop in and you can login right now and check your email?” Connie offers, literally licking the (finally empty) plate in his hands clean. Connie might not  
seem it, but he’s incredibly perceptive, and he knows that Marco’s better off sharing his happiness or pain about this with others because he’ll just end up feeling lonelier if he finds out whatever the news is at home. Even if Marco himself would disagree.

But what if it’s bad? What if he’s been rejected? He’s going to have to worry about facing his step dad, and his mom, and feeling like shit whilst his two best friends celebrate their own accomplishments. Shouldn’t he be alone? Will they really be able to handle his deflation, if it comes? Is there really anything they could do to make him feel better?  
But then again, if he DOES get accepted, then he’ll have someone to congratulate him and pat his back. He’ll have someone to immediately validate his achievement. Isn’t that a good thing?

Marco sighs and agrees to Connie’s suggestion, and the rusty old Toshiba is hauled into the room with its charger, because its battery is too dead to let the laptop function without it. It’s set to perch upon the mattress, and the four of them huddle around it. Connie switches it on and so much as opens the right explorer and website for Marco, after Sasha plugs the charger into the nearest socket, and hands it to him with an encouraging smile.

 

_Deep breaths, Bodt. Deep breaths._

 

He sighs through his nose and the knot in his stomach tangles up until he’s just this close to puking everything in it out. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he registers Connie and Sasha moving to press against his sides.

 

_Deep. Breaths._

 

He rests the laptop on his thighs and types in his details with trembling fingers and feels his heartbeat race whilst the page loads to his inbox. He’s feeling faint and really light, but not the good kind of light; light like he’ll fade away into the background any instant now.

 

_It’s okay. You’ve got this. You’re okay._

 

Beside him, Connie and Sasha are fidgety and still bubbly with their happiness, and it’s making Marco even more nauseous than before, but the emails finally load, and his eyes scan their entirety… and his heart skips a beat.

Right there, near the top of the page.

Right _there._

“I-I can’t believe it.”, he breaths, his head spinning, “T-they got back to me.” He doesn’t even want to read past the sender’s address, it’s giving him a weird sort of conflicted feeling. Why does this email have to be so vague? Can’t they just say ‘Congratulations!’ or ‘Your application has been rejected’ in the subject instead of ‘Update on your application to The University of Trost’. God, how _mean_ is that? Subject lines are _meant_ to kill suspense. 

“Open it.” Sasha ushers, pointing towards the top most correspondence that sports the university’s name in bold.

And so he does, painstakingly bringing the mouse to the email, and finds that his courage in keeping his eyes glued to the screen were in vain, because the email just links him to his portal. Now he has to open that. His resolve snaps about when the tab with his portal begins to load, and the dumps the laptop into Sasha’s hands.

He can’t even bring himself to ask her to read it out, or explain his predicament, he just buries his face in his hands. She’ll understand.

He feels Connie lean towards her when his arm presses against his own chest, and hears him inhale sharply when he sees whatever’s written on the screen and mutter a ‘whoa, shit.’ to himself. Marco groans from in between his fingers, heart rate escalating unhealthily. This isn’t excitement he’s feeling, it’s some sort of unrest. Trost U was never a dream, it was just one of the better affordable options.

Connie doesn’t say anything else.

His quiet words are followed by a silence, a long drawn out pause, and the atmosphere is dripping with anticipation.

 

Until Aisha laughs.

 

“You guys really shouldn’t torture the poor boy like that, TELL HIM.” she scolds, still giggling, and Marco is still not strong enough to take a peek into the browser, so he just groans some more, hoping that Aisha’s laughter means good news. It probably does…but _still._

“Alright, alright, enough with the drama.” Sasha doesn’t even warn him before ripping his hands away from his face and pressing the laptop’s screen straight into his nose. It’s too close to him for him to make out anything, but he plucks up his courage and squints at the words anyway until Sasha decides he’s way too slow and useless for her liking and pulls away the computer and sets it aside, choosing to trap him in a bear hug instead.

“YOU GOT IN, YOU GOOF.” she yells into his ear, “YOU GOT INTO TROST!”

 

 

And, for a moment, Marco really cannot breathe. 

 

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

He doesn’t stay around and wait for Rita to come over from her office, but he does stick around long enough to make plans for the afternoon once they figured they’d done their fair share of verbal celebrating. Connie and Sasha are so excited for high school to end so they can head right off to college. They’ve practically been vibrating with energy and if you could harness some of that and put it to good use, Marco’s sure you’d last for a good while.

Marco himself isn’t excited as much as relieved. He doesn’t have to worry about hearing from his family about his pathetic life anymore, his mother won’t spent sleepless nights tossing and turning out of anxiety and wondering if her son is going to end up on the streets, he’ll finally be able to answer all those people at work who keep asking him what he’s doing instead of shrugging their questions off like he never heard them.

He’s always heard them.

He really wonders why he _didn't_ stay over at Connie’s any longer, and why he came home saying he’d rather be alone when he called up his mother and Peter. He doesn’t understand why he felt like doing this, but he somehow still doesn’t want to go back.

Maybe he enjoys his solitude more than he likes to admit.

Or maybe he starts feeling like a burden if he lingers around others for too long.

But it’s so quiet here, just the low hum of the refrigerator and the ticking of the clock. That’s not the way things are meant to be, and this might just be the most notable thing to have happened to him in a long while.

He called his mother a couple minutes ago, and she was so happy for him, he swears he heard her voice crack, too. For once, he wasn’t disappointing her. He even texted Peter, just short and brief and straight to the point; Peter didn’t say much, just replied with a ‘good.’ that felt at empty as it would sound from him in person.

He send Erwin a message, too, because those three months they spent working for his charity in India together had made Marco look up to him like the fatherly figure he’d missed since he was eight. His reply didn’t come. Instead, he chose to call Marco and tell him, in that deep, sincere voice of his, how proud he was and how he should come by the office later for some extra work, if he’d like. 

Erwin had never been one for boisterous displays of emotion, but he has his own ways of letting you know how he feels.

It’s overwhelming, really, letting go of this monstrous weight that had been pressing down upon him for so long and so, so relieving. Marco actually feels light, because he can rest now. Properly, emotionally, rest and not worry about things for a good while. Things will be okay, now, the hopeful voice in his head has finally found its spark.

Still, this quiet is really driving him mad, and he just paces up and down the stairs with his hands folded behind his back like a restless spirit and then decides to circle around the house until he tires. He runs by the fridge and sees the fluorescent post-it, again, but chooses to ignore it until his second round when he pauses to read it.  
It’s from his mom, he can identify her curly, small, handwriting anywhere. Of course, who else would leave him a post-it; Mina can’t reach up here and Peter is entirely out of question.

_Marco,  
I’m sorry._

That’s it. It doesn’t have anything else on it, just that. No explanation no backstory, no nothing. 

It doesn’t need one, though. This is about last night, there’s no doubt about it.

He opens the fridge, more out of still lingering hunger than appreciation, and he find her offering on the second last shelf. 

 

_Oh._

 

Walnut brownies, a whole batch of them. They’re cold and stiff, now, but she made these, early in the morning, to apologize for something that wasn’t her fault; probably because she knew the one who truly was guilty would never apologize to Marco himself.He knows she probably meant for him to see these as soon as he woke up so they’d be fresh and soft, but he decides he’d eat them even if they were soggy and rotten, if only to let her know it’s okay.

He’s okay, now. He’s _better_ than okay, for once.

He’s going to be going out with his friends. He’s going to be enjoying. He’s going to have one really _solid_ entry for his Jar.

Things are looking up, everything will might just work out, everything could be okay, and all he has to do is make it through these four years and do it well. 

 

 

Even these empty corridors can’t take away from that.


	2. Spark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean Kirschtein struggles to handle the anxiety that Imminent College brings and he sort of does _okay_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, I'd _like_ to say I finished this entire chapter in less than 24 hours but that's the furthest thing from the truth. I'd actually had about 2 and half chapters of this written already, they just needed some editing and formatting till they were ready to go.  
>  In other news, I'm still as antsy as ever and I probably won't sleep well because I'll be fretting about this for ages, but the satisfaction is worth it. 
> 
> |[tumblr](http://fitried.tumblr.com/)|[twitter](https://twitter.com/fitried_)|
> 
> (FEEDBACK IS REALLY COOL BTW!)

It's time we light it up  
Our match's to the grain  
The tension's driving in  
We ain't looking down

**Fitz and the Tantrums - Spark** |[x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh-pGxZBQ1Y)|

  


  


  


  


Jean Kirschtein has a problem.

And yes, it’s just the one (unless you count Eren Jaeger, that pesky ass of a human, in which case he has two) and he can deal with it _himself_ , thank you very much.

It’s not even that _big_ of a problem. It’s just extremely _annoying_. He should have been able to get past this ages ago but he’s still stuck here with his sketch book in his hands and a filthy scowl on a face he’d usually call handsome. 

Oh screw that, it’s still handsome.

You could see it right now if you were to…squint…real hard.

But Jean is a _great_ guy. He’s charismatic and hot and clever and honest and sort of athletic and _really_ cool. Jean doesn’t deserve this. Especially not when he’s spent _days_ trying to work through something that really shouldn’t be this difficult to get.

Thing is, Jean is an exceptionally talented artist, if he might say so himself, but ever since he’s gotten into realistic drawing, there’s always been that one thing he hasn’t been able to draw. That one thing that makes his full body studies look immature, the one thing that has him searching endlessly for the very tutorials he promised himself he’d never look at out of pride. The one thing he’s scared is going to make him look like an absolute _tool_ when he’s finally in class at his university. Well, it probably won’t be such a big deal but he can’t look like he doesn’t know his shit.

He _knows_ his shit.

It’s not _his_ fault the tutorials won’t help, he’s the kind of guy who needs to figure out his own way around things or he just doesn’t get them. That’s exactly why he spends hours at an end trying to come up with suitable hand visualizations. The best thing he’s come up with so far was that spiked potato.

That one didn’t end very well.

It had _seemed_ like a perfectly appropriate substitute for a hand but, apparently, using that kind of imagery in your mind gives you a very less than satisfactory result because it looks _nothing_ like a hand even with all the detailing.

It just looks like a spiked potato. And those have no place anywhere near your body.

Currently, he’s trying to observe his own hand and pen down a rough sketch of that. But he keeps moving it and his sketches ultimately come out looking grotesque and oddly inflated.

 

_Fucking. Bravo._

 

He groans and throws the book and pencil to his side, letting them fall behind him on the carpet and leans back down on his elbows, peeking out forward at the vast expanse of land before him that is his back yard, feeling like his failure at drawing hands surely has _something_ to do with the fact that Eren got pissy at him _yet_ again, yesterday, over getting the damn dorm room to himself. Everything is always Eren’s fault. That petulant asshole.

The grass is green as ever, the sky is blue as ever and everything is pretty damn swell. If not for the fact that he’s going to have his first day of University tomorrow.

As much as Jean hates to admit it, he’s fucking _terrified_ of what’s going to happen tomorrow because he has no idea what sort of people he’s going to meet and whether or not he’s going to regret getting that room all alone.

Probably not, though. He’s never found himself to be the kind of person who can stand company all 24 hours of a day, he really needs that time to himself, and who can stand _his_ face for that long anyway? He’s known Eren and Mikasa for a long stretch now and lord knows they’ve wanted to kill him for a good third of it. He still doesn’t quite understand how his parents have managed to maintain a fairly stable relationship with him for 18 straight years without dumping him out on the road in a basket. Probably has something to do with that whole ‘unconditional love’ business. It must be pretty damn unconditional if you can stand a kid with a constant bitch face and an apparent abhorrence towards just about anything, enough to actual _sustain_ him and, like, talk to him and stuff. Whoa.

He’s gotta give the folks a tight hug of thanks, tonight. Probably not, but it’s the thought that counts, yeah?

He sighs and stares at the flat clouds trying to make out some shapes and figures, the way his father does when he calms himself down, but the anxiety has forced him into a state of restlessness that doesn’t allow him to sit idle at all. 

He’s got to have something to do and it sure ain’t art- he’s got a whole four years of college for that stuff.

If he talks to a friend, if he has someone to yell at, maybe the panic dissipates somewhat. If he can just vent it out, channel all these emotions elsewhere, it’ll probably be the best. He’ll be able to look at clouds, and possibly even get some sleep when the night comes around, and maybe not run through all his bags and make sure he’s packed everything right for the seventh time. That’s probably too farfetched; he’s _definitely_ going through the luggage again, he’s so sure he’s forgotten his iPod, so damn sure. But…he might just get some sleep this time.

There isn’t really a vast selection of people to choose from, though, to yell at or even call up casually. Jean doesn’t have that many friends, never managed to keep any through high school or otherwise, and it isn’t that much of a surprise, but it’s times like this he wishes he’d have held his tongue back when he should have. 

Calling up Mikasa to complain about his life to her is too daft an idea to even entertain for a moment. He’d probably get sassed into a state of paralysis, and he can’t really bring himself to call up that Marlow guy from the grocery store who’s been hitting on him for the past couple weeks. That leaves only one option, and in an ideal world, it would probably be a terrible decision and he’d just call up someone he _hadn’t_ previously argued with maybe 12 hours ago just to fuss and whine.

But it must be done.

Against his better judgment, Jean drags his phone out from behind him with yet another distasteful noise and fumbles around with his contacts until he comes across the right one, and presses to dial. It rings once, twice, thrice and Jean begins to get doubtful until the call is finally answered at the fourth ring.

“Eren Jaeger.” He states, with the screen pressed to his ear.

“This better be an apology, Kirschtein.”

Jean imagines the face of a boy with coppery skin, dark hair and electric green eyes that would probably glow with fire if it were possible, scowling. Eren hardly wears a different expression.

“You know, you’re probably better off NOT sharing a room with me, so I don’t see what the fuss is about.”

“You’re right, but it’s kind of standard to think someone you’ve known for A HUNDRED YEARS would maybe request to have a room with you when you’re out in a new place instead of being forced to share with a STRANGER WHO COULD BE EXTREMELY DANGEROUS.” Eren is clearly not in one of his lesser angry moods, and what a wonderful time for it; Jean might be capable of pulling off a regular sounding conversation, but he’s far too nervous to actually be entirely present in it enough to let Eren’s jibes get to him the way they would.

“First of all: it was you who decided to avoid contact with your roommate for ‘the sake of adventure’ and, second: we’re still in the same city and it’s been eight years actu-“

“Jean Kirschtein if you get technical on me I will tell Mikasa it was you who broke my arm in middle school and she will fuck you up I swear on my damn honor.”Eren hisses. It’s been a while since he’s used Mikasa in his threats, normally they’re all about his _own_ ‘supreme power’.

Eren must be agitated, too, if he’s going there. Jean pulls some strength from it and finds it within himself to retort, “What _honor_ , you irritable prick. You just threatened to set your sister at me to do your dirty work because I was stating FACTS –“

“Is that you saying you’re okay with me telling her, I wonder? All right, if you’re so sure –’’

“NO. NO. FUCK NO. God, Eren, you can be so difficult.”

“At least I have some semblance of a social sense.”

Jean groans into his hand, letting himself lay flat upon the floor and looking up towards the ceiling. It’s hard enough to be lying here with his heart running off at some incredible and, surely, unhealthy rate and his stomach feeling like it’s been slit open and filled with butterflies without having his one emotional outlet excel at being a shit. Eren is never going to let this one go.

“Eren, please.”

“You suck, Kirschtein.”

“If you’re done hating me, I’d like to get to the point.” Jean mutters.

“I’ll consider not slitting that pale ass throat of yours for a minute, sure.” says Eren, resigning surprisingly quickly. 

“Much appreciated.” says Jean, pausing to close his eyes and trying to breathe evenly to steady out his heart beat, his feet pattering against the carpet trying endlessly to exhaust his nerves. He might just be going nuts but, somehow, he can hear people screaming right into his ears, panicking just as he might end up doing, shouting and crying, their voices clear and sharp and too close. Too close. This isn’t the first time this has happened, definitely not the last, probably not a good idea to tell Eren he’s hearing things. “I just… I’m kinda nervous.” he breathes, feeling all too aware of the weight in his scrawny chest. This is familiar, all these feelings, even the series of anxious voices in his head, but they’re not comfortable.

Eren stays silent for two seconds, two very long seconds, like he almost can’t believe Jean opened up to him, and then he snorts, “Kinda?”, he says, “I’m sat here trying not to die of heart palpitations or hitting my head against the wall till it bleeds.” He chuckles at the other end of the line, but it’s more terrified laughing than anything mirthful. 

It’s comforting. It’s so comforting to know that he’s not just overreacting, that it’s all normal. It’s okay to feel like this, of course it is, and he’s going to start something pretty important tomorrow, after all. He doesn’t feel as vulnerable any more.

“I’m gonna be dead before the morning, Jaeger. You can’t have any of my stuff.”

“Not like I want your goddamn stuff. Idiot.”

Jean huffs and tilts his head back so he can size up more of the roof and maybe find something up there that he hasn’t after living beneath it all these years. All his life.

He’s been flitting around here for as long as he has lived, he knows all these rooms like he knows how to breathe, all so naturally and subconsciously. He knows the creaky floorboards and all the switches that don’t flick properly, the right drawers for all his snacks, that places you can in hide without ever being found, and even if it might be too big a place for just three people to live in…its home. It might be a little too dumb of him to complain about leaving this place when it’s only a two hour drive away from Uni, but it is what it is.

What’s it going to be like to call someplace else by the same name? Home. With different people, different rooms, different switches and stairs…

“Do you think it was right?” he asks Eren, suddenly, “Not choosing to stay at home? I mean, the University is in the same city and everything and I know it’s all the way at the other end of town, but…”

It’s odd to say it out loud, and to _Eren_ , of all people. He’ll probably get teased or get back some sort of sarcastic answer, as usual, but he had to say it. He hadn’t really let himself think about it before but suddenly it’s like everything wrong about this is popping up in his head.

Eren doesn’t laugh at him, though, he doesn’t even say anything for a moment, just stretches out the silence between them until he finally figures out what to say.

“I think…I think I’ll be good knowing I can make it on my own.” He says it hesitantly, like he’s testing the waters, before he continues, “I’ve lived all these years my parents and Mikasa keeping my back and telling me I’m too reckless to make it out on my own and…it’s probably true, but I- I mean, it’s not like I mind them, I LOVE them, just – this is something I need to do. Take care of myself, I mean.”

It’s weird. The last time Jean ever had a heart to heart with Eren like this was…when? When had they both last been this sincere with each other, or anyone? He couldn’t recall it. 

“Yeah, I get it.” He assures, letting his fidgeting fingers rest over his heart, trying to ground its pace.

There’s a pause again, and Eren sighs over the phone. Jean finds the unease dulling to a somewhat bearable thrum.

Even if things will be different, now, Eren will still be around and home will always be this close. He can come here every weekend if he likes, it’s his choice, and he doesn’t have to sever himself from all of it immediately.

“Why aren’t _you_ staying at home, why did you choose campus stay?” Eren muses, more to himself than Jean, “You said something about ‘gettin’ laid would be a hassle’ or something along those lines.”

Jean hums, trying to figure out how to word his response.

“Well it’s too fucking far, obviously”, he says,” and I don’t want to feel like I’m relying on the folks all the time or spending too much money like I would’ve if I’d gone to Sina.” He runs a hand through his ash blonde hair and moves the phone to his other ear, 

 

_And I’ll feel like less of a burden. No one can stand someone like me for that long. Not even them._

 

Eren makes a ‘tsk’ sound, “Hmm. I always wondered why someone with the sort of money you have would choose Trost U if you could go just about anywhere.” The brief moment of honesty seems to be fading away between them, he can feel it. Jean’s glad of it, it would’ve been unnatural for it to stay any longer.

“The University of Trost is convenient.”

“Also you didn’t get into Sina.”

“I thought you were being nice to me.”, grumbles Jean.

Eren huffs “Don’t get used to it. I’m still mad at you.”

Jean laughs, not a proper laugh but he’s getting close. He doesn’t feel like he’s going to die any time soon, the voices in his ears are still around, but they’re not clawing at him as much as they were. He can deal with it.

“Yes, my love. I’ll get you fucking roses as red as my love to apologize.” He says in straight monotone, smirking and the probable look on Eren’s face.

“Black roses, Jean? You shouldn’t have.”

“As rare as my feeling for you.”

“Ah, yes, as rare as the seething hatred you have. For everyone.”

“Fuck off, Jaeger.”

“Ouch. That’s kind of rude, Romeo.”

“How about I beat the shit out of you.”

“How about ‘you can try’.”

As much as Jean despises entirely to admit it, Eren is undoubtedly better than him at hand to hand combat and there’s no point denying it, Eren has proven himself repeatedly. Jean simply growls in defiance. 

“Say,” Eren begins, “If you really do want to get beat…I was going to get some coffee at Mike’s in a bit. You up?”

“Are you asking me out on a date, Jaeger?” Jean coos, sliding his fingers back and forth across the carpet to feel the soft threads beneath them.

“I bet you wish I was, you trashcan.” 

“You break my heart, Eren…but I’ll come, sure.”

“I’ll see your hideous face in 15. Treat’s on you.”

“Wait, wha –’’

Before Jean can protest, Eren drops the call and leaves him staring at the chandelier above him, his anxiety replaced with irritation and an emotion that can only be classified as ‘Goddamit, Jaeger’. A common phenomenon experienced by generally anyone around the guy, and just about 24 hours a day in the case of his adoptive sister, Mikasa Ackerman.

But, Jean _does_ have allot more money to throw and it’s not like he has anything better he wants to do with it at the moment. Might as well disburse it on the nearest little shit and pretend like spending his parents’ money this freely for the last time (he¬ hopes) has some nostalgic value he’ll treasure soon enough. Eren can have whatever he likes. Heck, he can have _five_ of it.

Besides, coffee beats dying of agitation any day, and Mike’s is just three minutes away, if you _walk_ there.

Even _Jean_ isn’t lazy enough to pass that up.

He pulls his gaze away from the chandelier to push himself up onto his elbows and then upright with his palms pressed against the dulling beige of the carpet. He exhales, not entirely too willing to get off his ass just yet, and takes a minute to judge his outfit. The same ratty old jeans he’s been wearing three days in a row, more to spite his mother who begged him to throw them out than out of his affection for them, and his black batman t-shirt. Okay, no, the t-shirt has to go: way too many people wear that shit.

Nodding to himself to affirm his own assessment, he gives himself a final push onto his feet and begins his trek to his room, dodging coffee tables and sofas alike to reach the staircase that spirals up to the first floor. He remembers asking his father if they could have a slide instead, when he was just five and still unable to understand how that would hinder their ability to actually move _up_. He never liked these stairs, still doesn’t; there something about climbing up over glass that bothers him in some way he can’t explain. But, there isn’t any other way to get up unless you drag a ladder out into the garden and clamber up into the veranda or something.

He hikes up with a huff and veers left to kick his room’s door open to the welcome sight of the mess he’s so accustomed to living in. His laundry lies in random spots all over the tiles, paint splotches leading all the way from the bathroom to his right to the desk over at the left corner, his laptop and a bunch of crumpled sheets strew on his unnecessarily large bed from his previous attempts at hand-ing this morning, and the vast collection of posters stuck all over the walls. It’s not just the posters, though, he’s got flags from all the countries him or his parents have ever visited, fairy lights he took from the tree last Christmas and even a couple of reminder post-its he let stay out of whim.

He’s got a pretty rad room, if he’ll be honest, but there’ll be time to sit and marvel at it whilst he sobs later. He probably should clean it up, too, as a farewell gift to the housekeep who’ll probably not believe her own eyes if he does. Right now, however, he has got to get out of this shirt. There should be something decent smelling laying around here somewhere, all the best stuff is packed away in the suitcases he dragged downstairs and he wouldn’t _dare_ fish through those.

There’s an old Metallica shirt next to his foot that smells pretty alright, and it’s even got splatters of red paint down the bottom. Perfect, he wonders why he didn’t pack this one into his bags. 

He shimmies out of the batman tee, throwing it onto the bed for later handling, and slips into the new one, pausing at the mirror to check himself out.

The same old tawny eyed, pointy nosed, fucker from everyday stares back at him with that smug grin of his plastered over his face, like his undercut doesn’t look ridiculous on him or anything. Jean can’t complain, though, the fucker is pretty damned hot. Yes, even in those bullshit jeans.

“Right.” he mutters, dragging his eyes away from his own face to start patting around his pockets in search for his phone to check the time, before realizing he’s left it downstairs with his sketchbook. He grumbles and sulks down the stairs, veering around the furniture again and coming to rest to pick his phone up from the floor.

3:15, just five minutes till he has to reach. Might as well leave now so he can have some excuse to yell at Eren and tell him he’s late when he comes afterwards.

It seems like a pretty pleasant afternoon, sunny and breezy and all that, he could try jogging to Mike’s café, or something.

He ponders the idea as he picks the house keys off the key rack and makes his way outside to the gates that lead into his driveway. It _is_ pretty pleasant, he decides jogging is a go, even if his destination is uphill.

He swings open the gates and bolts them back into place once he’s out, thrusting the keys deep into his pocket with the phone and wallet, getting ready to go. It’s been a while since he’s done some proper physical activity, this should really be good for him. It’s about time he gets fit or at least somewhat capable. He rubs his hands together and sets his eyes on laser focus up the road and to the bend he has to reach that leads out of his neighborhood. He can do this, he knows he can.

Yet as he starts up and finds his muscles straining literally halfway up the slope, he realizes his work-out hiatus has been longer than he’d thought. He’s panting and wheezing and clutching his sides by the time he’s made it to the bend, having to stop and rest against some odd neighbor’s garden wall until he can regain himself.

“Holy shit.” He breathes, face red and sweaty from exertion, “Holy _shit_.”

With a groan, he looks up to see he still has to make his way to Mike’s and there’s still a stretch of road left to go. Whoever came up with this jogging idea anyway? 

Alright, so he may having been lying about that ‘athletic abilities’ thing earlier. You know what they about lying so often about something it becomes the truth, right? Jean believes strongly in that philosophy.

With some amount of inhuman strength and resolve, he finds himself trudging along the road and so much as sprinting through the last couple meters until he’s right inside the café. Still sweaty and awkwardly pathetic, but proud nonetheless. And _Eren’s_ not here, bless the boy, or he would have made the most of Jean’s lack of stamina for his own sadistic pleasure.

Some of the customers stop sipping their drink midway to look at Jean as though he just dropped from the sky, but they turn straight back to their business just as quickly. He pulls himself along with the help of the chairs and sits himself down on one of the plushy sofa chairs close to the counter, arms thrown around the rests so he can sink straight in. He comes here often enough to make himself comfortable, not like Mike will mind. Just gotta wait for the Jaeger to come, now, but he’ll probably be late, as always…

He decides to while away the minutes judging strangers from his prime location that lets him scan the entire café. You can find so many interesting people if you have the eye for it, and Jean happens to have _the best_ sort of eye for it. It’s a hobby of his from whenever so it is that he bothers to leave the happy confines of his home, and he just keeps getting better and better at it. Soon enough, he might even be able to tell you if someone’s a sociopath by the way they blink, it’s only a matter of time. For the time being, he tries to make up stories for the people around him, just to make things fun.

So he finds his eyes moving over everyone in his vicinity, in search of something to single them out from the others in room and-

Wait.

What is _this_?

He moves his gaze back to the corner of the room closest to him, where something, no, _someone_ , had caught his eye and he finds himself unable to keep his mouth from hanging open when he finds them.

 

_Oh. Fuck._

 

Sat alone on the table, with a deep wonder in his dark eyes and his checkered shirt rolled up to his elbows and his pretty freckled face cupped in his hands. Right there is the most beautiful boy Jean has ever seen. 

Ever. 

And, goddamn, is he _gorgeous._

His eyes with their perfect, hazel orbs and his pretty pink lips drawn into a small pout that might just be the cutest fucking thing Jean has ever come across. His tanned high cheekbones, nose and forehead all dotted with freckles that range from the burnt sienna of his paints to the ochre of leaves in autumn, and his features framed by that strong jaw. Oh, and his _hair_ ; dark and mussed over, probably by his own fingers, but still parted perfectly down the middle. It looks so fucking _soft_ , Jean wonders what it would be like to run his own fingers through that, or pat it down, or stroke it or-

Wow. Can’t go there just yet. Poor guy’s a stranger, albeit the cutest stranger ever.

But he looks so strong, jeez. All broad shouldered and with those taut muscles in his forearms, so much unlike the soft flesh of Jean’s hands. He looks like one of those guys who has people swooning all over him, but is far too oblivious to understand, which makes him all the more cute and swoon-able over.

As if to prove the point, he hasn’t even noticed the way Jean’s been staring at him for the past couple minutes; too drawn away from shore in his thoughts to pay him any heed. And thank whatever God he has to thank for _that_ , because Jean finally finds himself capable of pulling his eyes away from the boy’s unbelievable face to the coffee glass sat half-finished in front of him. It takes a moment for Jean’s dazed brain to register it, but when he does, Jean can hardly hide his glee.

He’s drinking _Jean’s_ favorite chocolate coated, ice cream topped coffee. Not that he knows who Jean is, much less the fact that he, too, enjoys the Devil’s Own at Mike’s. But it _has_ to be some strange feat of destiny.

But this is so great! What a wonderful way to introduce himself, over similar tastes and what not, assuming Jean can keep his tongue in check and maybe not mention how he would _totally_ not be opposed to the idea of _immediately_ going out with him, or kissing him senseless, or pressing him hard against a wall and-

 

_Hold it right there, son._

 

Goddamn, he really shouldn’t have worn these decade old jeans. Should’ve listened to his ma when he had the chance, so he wouldn’t be jeopardizing any chance he might have at true love right now. Why does he never think about these things? 

But, that’s okay, Freckles here seems like the kind of guy who doesn’t judge for that sort of thing, even if _his_ jeans are all prim and proper and all that. Looks like a nice guy. If Jean could _just_ -

“Oi. Kirschtein. What’s it you’re spacing out about?”

Jean probably jumps a mile high out of shock, finding Eren _immense-fucking-cockblock_ Jaeger stood in front of him with his hands on his hips, wearing an atrociously bright shirt that’s so green it hurts, and coming _this close_ to hiding Jean’s object of love from view. It’s always Eren’s fault. Without fail. He should’ve have heard the bell over the door signaling his arrival. The bell is there for a goddamn reason.

Really, Jean’s been far too immersed thinking about the boy in the corner because he’s somehow forgotten how speech works. Suddenly, he can’t find the words to convey his fiery hatred to Eren. Instead, he just stares at him wide eyed and mouth agape.

Eren looks around a little, retracing Jean’s gaze to where it had been before he so rudely interrupted, and it comes to rest on the stunning boy who seems to have snapped out of his daydreams and is currently sipping away at his drink, eyes turned down and his long lashes casting small shadows over his cheeks. Eren hums in appreciatively, pursing his lips and nodding his head, before plopping himself down opposite Jean.

“He’s pretty cute.” Eren says, a shit-eating smirk playing across his lips, “Don’t know if he’ll be into horses, though.”

Jean splutters, and the words find his throat again, “W-what! F-fuck you, Jaeger.”

“I’ve never seen you this worked up over a stranger-crush before. Jeez, Jean, calm your tits.”Eren says it so casually, pretending like Jean isn’t glaring at him aghast and extremely red in the face. Eren clearly does not have a single romantic bone in that shit body of his.

“I-it’s not like t-that!” Jean protests, hands flailing wildly. He’s completely forgotten his plan to chide Eren for his lack of punctuality, or that he came here for coffee.

Or, he _had_ forgotten, till the moment Mike Zacharius himself walks to their table, towering above them with his notepad in one hand and the other scratching his goatee. He’s got this mischievous look on his otherwise stoic face like he _knows_ what’s up.

“Alright, boys? Sorry I didn’t come by earlier, Jean, I noticed you were, ah… _otherwise occupied_.”

 

_Of course he knows._

 

He gestures with his chin towards the freckled boy and Jean turns to him frantically to make sure he hasn’t noticed. Freckles still hasn’t looked up, bless him. But what the hell; even _Mike_ noticed him spacing out in his admiration.

“Been at it that long, have we Jean?” Eren chuckles, lifting his arm to fist-bump Mike.

“About three minutes, now, I reckon.” says Mike, cocking an eyebrow at Eren as they share some sort of amusement reaped from Jean’s pain.

There are no true friends.

They laugh a little and Jean fights himself trying not to look back at the boy he finds himself so drawn to, so he doesn’t fuel their jokes.

“Who is he, though? Haven’t seen him around.”, says Eren looking at Jean with an expression that screams trouble, but Jean straightens up visibly, self-control be damned. Of course, Eren snorts at him.

“Kid’s called Mark, or something”, Mike runs a hand through his neat dusty-blonde hair that falls right back into place and rubs his cheek, and Jean keeps running name over and over in his head, “Smells like a nice dude. He’s been coming around here for three days now, doesn’t talk much. He said he’s staying up at his aunt’s for a few days, trying to get used to the city before college starts. Think he’s going to the same Uni as you two, actually.”

Jean chokes on air and stomach butterflies.

“W-what?” he gasps, eyes flying right back to this Mark, who flicks his own up and locks their gazes for just a second, blinks his perfect, large, eyes and turns back to his coffee, expressionless. Jean doesn’t think he’s ever believed in God this strongly before…until he realizes he’s just been caught staring wide eyed and blushing furiously. Dammit.

“You serious, Trost U?” Eren asks, sneering still. 

Mike nods, eyes closed and chin jutted up. Jean is truly going to die, and he won’t even have gotten the freckly brunet’s number. He never might, even if he survives, the boy probably thinks Jean is some sort of ass-hat, what with the staring and all. He can’t possibly be going to the same Uni, he can’t- the stars don’t ever align like that. 

“You know what would be _rich_ , Jean?” Eren’s voice is laced thick with menace. This can’t possibly be good, and Jean just ruined his very first impression with this exquisite human he should have been wooing by now. Damn this shit-head.

Jean just sighs through his nose and pouts, wondering if he should offer this Mark chocolates or something tomorrow, to make up for today, if Mike isn’t just playing with his feelings. Maybe, then, Mark will think he’s an okay person, and might even choose to be his _friend_.

“…if HE turns out to be the roommate you could have had.”Eren finishes, wiggling his eyebrows. Even an idiot such as him knows the chances are minute as hell, and yet he stoops his taunts to this level.

“If I had a shared room, your ass would find a way to share it with me.” Jean retorts, rolling his eyes and catching another fleeting glance towards ‘Mark or something’ who has just a fifth of his coffee left to finish.

“Oh, but if I _hadn’t…_ ”

Jean buries his face in his hands and mutters a ‘fuck you’ he hopes is heard. To think he was opening up to this same piece of sparsely brained fuck right here just a while ago…

“Wait…’ _could have had_ ’? Aren’t you two sharing a room?” Mike asks, and he probably doesn’t mean to, but he makes Jean’s predicament worse by far. Jean’s dorm room decisions had never accounted for the possibility that he might have a hot roommate, because his only potential roommate was a certain green-eyed fuckwit. But what _if_? 

“Oh! Oh yeah. Jean’s prissy ass got himself a room alone because he needs all that quality time with his own face.”

Jean peaks at Mike between his fingers, praying that he isn’t judging his choices too, but he looks entirely thrown off. Of course he does.

“Why wouldn’t you share a room with Eren …?” he questions, accusingly, trailing off and then pauses to turn towards where Mark is sat. Jean doesn’t dare follow his eyes.

“Jean, it appears the love of your life is leaving.” Mike whispers from the corner in his mouth, smiling at Freckles as he presumably moves towards the door. Jean shifts his vision up immediately, still hidden safe behind his fingers, to catch the sight of him one last time before he sees him tomorrow, hopefully, watching him skirt smoothly around the chairs and tables and turn around once to wave Mike goodbye, smiling.

Smiling.

By God. Even something as small as that…and Jean’s breath hitches. He pretends diligently that it was meant for him, and not the man stood next to him. Who’d have known there’d come a day when he’d be jealous of Mike? Who could have predicted? Thank god Freckles didn’t see his face watching him in awe this time and get creeped out, at least

Jean stares longingly at the boy as he leaves the café, the bell tingling gently when he does.

All of a sudden, the idea of going to college is a hundred times more exciting and terrifying simultaneously.

“You hate it when he leave, but you looooove watchin’ him go.” Eren chimes in a sing-song voice, and Jean punches him on the shoulder. Hard.

“ _Unnecessary_.”, hisses the brunet, rubbing his shoulder with a scowl. Hell if he didn’t deserve it.

Mike turns his head back towards their squabble, clears his throat and points meaningfully at the menu sat unseen before their eyes, “You kids may have forgotten, but I have a business to run and you have orders to make.” He says it in a stern tone, but there’s a smile tugging on his lips.

“Just bring us the usual”, says Eren, glowering, “After I’m done whooping Jean’s horse-ass.” There’s something just so satisfying to Jean about pissing him off.

Jean hums, letting his thoughts return to the boy with the pretty eyes and the idea of being able to see him again. He may just have been a welcoming distraction from all the things about tomorrow that make Jean’s stomach cave into itself, but he isn’t strong enough a force to pull him away from it entirely.

There’s just too much that’s about to change, and he has never been accustomed to change after living the same kind of life for all his years. The same people, the same school, the same room…at least his city is the same, even if the south of Trost is vastly different from the outskirts he lives in, and Eren will always be the same. 

For whatever small comfort it gives him, Jean looks towards the empty glass on Mark’s empty table, and adds him to the stack of things he should be looking forward to about college…and yet he finds that the pile of things that terrify him still towers high above.

Well, tomorrow’s going to happen whether he likes it or not; might as well try to spend the time before it best he can…and try to figure out some way to sweep this Mark off his feet whilst he’s at it.

 

 

Tomorrow is going to be one hell of a day.

 

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Jean discovers, on his way back home, that running _down_ slopes can also be tiring when the slope is not exactly nearing a vertical surface and is longer than a few meters.

He doesn’t really know why he wanted to do this after his first attempt at exercise had left him wheezing¬¬¬, but it probably has something to do with Eren mentioning he ran all the way to Mike’s from his house, which is a distinct _ten_ minutes away by foot, and how he reached there alive and not even in need of minute medical attention. Curse him and his fitness.

He leans against his gate for a second to suck in his breath and then pushes it open so he can trudge along the driveway and clamber up to the door. He pulls the keys out of his pocket with a little jingle and unlocks it, stepping into the heater induced warmth of his house from the weather outside that had begun to feel chilly. Eren had dragged their little meeting on for longer than Jean had anticipated, talking on and on about how he’d managed to get Mikasa pissed off with his shoddy packing and how sappy everyone was getting now that he wouldn’t be around for them to baby. That was, of course, once he was had used up all the ‘witty’ things he had to say about Jean’s stranger-crush on the freckled boy. No, no, he had a name, now: Mark.

It didn’t fit him, somehow. Felt like he should be called something…well, something else.

Not that Jean had dared to say anything about him, seeing as Eren was already taking full advantage of just how easy it was to get Jean blushing with things like “ _I bet he has a freckly ass._ ” or “ _Jean probably has the names for their kids planned out_ ”. It’s like there’s some part of him that was distinctly made to get on Jean’s nerves, like he was crafted on the basis of it or something. He doesn’t understand just how he’s Jean’s best friend despite of it, but you take what you get, right?

Hey, whatever can put up with him, he can put up with, too.

 

 _Well, Eren does have some nice things about him,_ Jean points out to himself as he picks up the sketch pad and pencil from the carpet, _he’s awfully determined, for one, and he’s always fun to argue with._

And Jean did make out with him that one night when they’d both gotten drunk out of their minds at one of those vague parties in high school Jean had somehow been invited to. Eren had been nice enough to not make a big deal out of it, so he had that to thank him for. And he did help out with Jean’s nerves just today…

If Jean were to be entirely honest, he’d tell you that they’ve both been pretty essential to each other but they’ll always be far too cocky to admit it.

Jean feels his phone buzzing in his pocket on his way up, and he pauses to check it once he’s off the glass staircase.

 **From Designated Asshole:**  
Hope u got sum good pick up lines for your ol’beloved freckles tomorrow. Ur gonna need em with a face like urs ;)

He takes back everything nice he’s said about Eren. Ever. He’s going to approach Marlow with the offer to be his confidant, Marlow is better by all accounts, there’s no doubt about it. Even with that _terrible_ bowl-cut. Maybe. He wonders how he’s going to ask the guy about it later whilst he taps out a reply with a grunt.

 **To Designated Asshole:**  
what is that supposed to imply.

 **From Designated Asshole:**  
U ugly. :^)

 **To Designated Asshole:**  
as opposed to you, a true vision.

 **From Designated Asshole:**  
I’m sure freckles wl be wooeedd by ur sarcasm.

 **To Designated Asshole:**  
you flatter me.

 **From Designated Asshole:**  
I’m kiddin hes wayyy out of ur league

Jean decides he’s going to ignore the fuck out of Eren and focus on getting his room a little cleaned up before tomorrow. He plunges the phone back into his pocket with a scowl and begins to haul his clothes off of the floor and sling them over his arm, one over the other. Turns out, there’s so much to put away he has to take a second round lest the clothes all slip back onto the floor from his arm, but once he’s done with them, the room looks significantly less crowded and his laundry bag significantly more full. He moves on to snatch all the crumpled sheets from his bed, sparing each a glance to see if any of them are worthy to be used as future reference and then dumping them all dejectedly into the bin beneath his desk upon finding that each one of them is terrible.

Grabbing his painting cloth from the desk and wetting it in the sink, he gets about to scrubbing the little splotches on the tiles and the counter of his bathroom, his arms burning from the exertion. He puts away all the drawing supplies and books he won’t be taking with him to University, and takes down all the wall décor he decides to taken with him off the walls, leaving blank white spaces where he’d never been used to seeing them.

In the end, it’s the vacant spaces that make him feel most squeamish; like they are the things that truly validate the fact that he won’t be staying here anymore. It feels almost like betrayal, and he can’t quite figure out why.

When he’s sat on the bed, staring wistfully at the walls he’d always been so proud of, the walls he’d always shown off every time they had guests over, the walls he’d taken years to fill up, the same walls he’d drawn upon as a kid…it’s just…strange. He can’t stand to think about it anymore, as much as a part of him just wants to sprawl across the mattress and do much the same for as long as he can. He figures he’ll finish his work and do the laundry he had stuffed into his bag, maybe distract himself from the dull humming of the house.

It’s 5:30, it’s a wonder he hasn’t gone through his suitcases for a fourth time, or died from the steadily building racket in his veins.

It’s stupid that he’s so madly excited about going to college, stupid that he can hardly control all the emotions. He’s not even getting a roommate, for God’s sake, so it’s not like the environment he’ll be living in is going to change as much as it would if he were. 

But still, even as he separates his clothes into the right piles and throws one in with the detergent and fabric softener to wash, he plays out scenarios of how things will go. How he’ll make his first friend, how his first lesson will go, how the orientation will be, how the room will be, how he’ll win Mark over with his charm…

Somewhere in him he knows all these things won’t work out the way he imagines they will, although he already knows what his room looks like, but that doesn’t stop the little movies in his head playing out in all sorts of versions. Most of them are terrible, since Jean doesn’t dare get his hopes up about things that are probably going to disappoint him if he does. The negative situations are starting to seem more likely by the minute.

 

_Well, can’t help then right now._

 

He’s sure he’ll do great; it’s all just paranoia after all. All these people before him have made it through, and are making it through, university all this while, so why can’t he? He’ll breeze right through, he’ll make all the right friends, ace all his classes, and maybe even get a date with this Mark. Who knows? It’s a whole new playing field, and he doesn’t have a terrible reputation to precede him anymore. He can be who he decides he wants to be, and not something his 14 year old self deemed cool at the time. His 18 year old self can surely make better decisions, now.

It’s only a matter of making it through tomorrow, and he’ll deal with whatever comes next when he has to.

He settles on his own pep talk and sulks around the house until his clothes are done, lurking like some sort of lanky, teenage ghost with an attitude problem. After he’s dealt with them accordingly, he nestles into the massive sofa downstairs and wastes his time channel surfing through the TV to relax. He doesn’t find anything sufficiently distracting, obviously, because you can always rely on televisions to let you down when you most need them, so he lays facing the ceiling again with his leg shaking continuously.

After a while, he becomes entirely unaware of the shaking, and miraculously falls asleep after what he feels was hours of pointless fantasizing. In his current emotional state, he never would’ve been able to catch a wink of a nap, but somehow the boredom sedates him and sets him drifting away into dreams he doesn’t realize he has slipped into.

Just like that, the sight of the roof above him merges into visions of a rather uncanny day at a seemingly unfamiliar university, and the transition goes by completely unnoticed. 

 

 

Jean Kirschstein sleeps peacefully for the first time in three days, and he doesn’t even know it.

 

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

“Sweetie, you need to pack all your toiletries after you’re done brushing in the morning, alright?”

“I know, ma.”

“Did you pack enough books? Do you have enough supplies to last you at least this week? Don’t make your father or I drive all the way up there to hand you any of your forms or anything.”

“I won’t, ma.”

“Have you taken enough money? I hope you’ve taken a first aid kit, too. Who knows when you might need it, right? I read about this one time-“

“ _Ma._ ”

Magali Kirschtein runs a hand through her dyed autumn hair and purses her lips. Her eyebrows shoot up in her round forehead, and the hand comes to rest on her cheek.

“Sorry, Jeanbo, you know I worry about you.”

Her son huffs from his nose, “Ma, you can’t call me that.” he says

Jean Kirschtein doesn’t look at all like his mother. His eyes are much lighter, his frame is much thinner, and his fingers are far more slender in comparison to the pudgy ones she has. Jean is more like a younger version of his father, who is sat opposite his mother on the dinner table, except he doesn’t have his black locks. He got the brown of his undercut from his mother, and the ash blonde from, well, his dye, but ever since she got hers colored to cover the grey roots, they look pretty much unrelated.

“Of course I can, Jeanbo, you’re my baby boy.” She coos, reaching her hand out to have it rest upon Jean’s. 

Jean turns to look pleadingly at his father, who just twirls his spaghetti around his fork with a smirk and remains silent. It doesn’t take much to figure out where the ‘asshole’ part of Jean originates from. He looks back to his mother.

“Ma, I’ve got everything packed in the right place. I promise. I literally just went through the bags right before dinner. And it’s not like I’m going off to some other country or anything…”

“Aw, Jean, but you haven’t EVER stayed away from us!” his mother really is getting more and more antsy by the minute, whereas Jean’s nap seems to have taken his worry with it.

“He _has_ been out on trips before.” Paul Kirschtein chooses this moment to interrupt, “There was even that one time he went to Italy for a week and-“

“Paul, _our baby is going to University_.” Magali looks at him irritably, waving her free hand in the air as though her husband has missed something essential, like gravity.

“Magali, _he’ll be back this weekend_.”

Jean’s mother shakes her head, distinctly going pink in the face and turning her attention back to her spaghetti. Jean, himself, is pretty grateful he didn’t tell her she could come to escort him to Trost U with Eren tomorrow. His mother had pretty much pounced on him the moment she had returned and jolted him out of a blissful sleep, and his father had just stood behind her sniggering. They both, however, congratulated him on his bedroom cleanup and pushed him into _yet_ another suitcase check in his groggy state. 

Jean hadn’t forgotten anything, not even the iPod he thought he had for sure, so all that work had been for nothing.

“Jean, I know you have your old ego and all that, but please just ask someone the way around if you get lost on campus.” his father says, raising an eyebrow towards him and taking a sip of water from his glass.

Jean grunts in response, and inhales his dinner amidst further such suggestions and tidbits of advice that he ignores, to keep the anxiety strictly at bay. He excuses himself hastily, to which his mother cries that he shouldn’t do so on their last meal together whilst Jean still stays here, but he insists that he _needs_ to go and does so anyway.

He climbs the stairs and opens his door faster than he has in a long time, flopping headfirst onto his bed and spreading his arms wide out.

He takes a couple moments just to steadily inhale the scent of the sheets to set them in his memory, and then flips himself onto his back to size up more of his room. He wonders just how _weird_ it’s going to be to not be sleeping here, and reminds himself that he’ll be sleeping here on the weekend anyway. Definitely not all of the weekends yet to come, but surely the most recent.

He reminds himself that Eren will be going to Trost U with him, and that home will be just a drive away when he needs it, and that he has enough money to drop out and start over someplace else if he doesn’t find himself liking it there. He knows he has a job waiting for him when he leaves, too, and a good one, at that. He’s all set. He needs to stop being a whiny little bitch and focusing so much on all this bullshit he’s thought about countless times over.

What he should be focusing on, at the moment, is how his phone is vibrating again in his pocket.

 **From Designated Asshole:**  
K so Mikasa won lemme drink 1L of coffee n stay up. Im kind of better nw? Sort of? Lyk not in need of immdiate hospitalization or nthn. Ur still a dick. C utmmrow. 

Hey, at least Eren is trying to be a decent human being, even if he isn’t the least successful. Jean responds with a series of annoyed emojis and slides the phone away from him. For a moment, he gets this weird feeling, like he wants to ask Eren for advice, and that’s stupid on so many levels. It’s not even like it has he needs to be advised on anything since everything is pretty much going smoothly, and why would he go to _Eren_ for advice, of all people? He did just establish to himself that worrying about tomorrow is stupid, and there’s really nothing else that needs dealing with. Life is pretty sorted, for him, what could he possibly need help with?

Unless you count hands, but, as he mentioned before, he can do that by himself, too. He’s never been one to ask people for help anyway; it’s often that they see him in desperate need and he doesn’t immediately ask them to leave him the fuck alone when they offer him their aid. The one time he did outright ask for help was when he was trying to get Mikasa to like him in his freshman year of high school and, for some reason, her brother had seemed like just the guy to go to. 

Unfortunately, Eren had done a terrible job of holding back his sniggers and had told Jean that he had ‘absolutely _no_ chance, sorry.’ Jean had learnt his lesson: don’t ask people for advice, especially if they’re called Eren Jaeger.

Well, not like Eren was wrong or anything. Mikasa, with her hair as black as a raven’s wings and fierce eyes, would never have looked at Jean twice if she hadn’t spent so much of her life with him around. A lesson learnt nonetheless.

And it isn’t the kind of lesson you admit you’ve learned to yourself with pride, or that you can justify sensibly – it’s more the kind that just settles into your brain regardless of whether or not it sounds right to you. It isn’t even Eren that Jean can blame for it (for once), it has kind of always there with him all his life, for some reason he hasn’t quite figured out yet. 

Not like thinking about your fucking issues the night before going to University is going to help you sort them out.

Jean throws his head back and makes a guttural ‘Ghhhhrrrrnn’ sound, slapping his hand over his forehead. There’s a soft knock on the door, from his mother, presumably, and Jean responds with another groan he hopes is translated as ‘go away’.

Apparently not, because his mother twists the doorknob and stands fidgeting with her fingers a few paces from his bed, her husband trailing hesitantly behind her with a contemplative look in his tawny eyes.

Jean cranes his neck to spare them a glance, and falls right back with a croaky whine.

“Are you okay, son?” his father shuffles awkwardly to the foot of the bed and looks as though he’s about to sit, but decides against it. Jean makes yet another nervous sound that closely resembles a dying cow, probably. He has allot of these to go around, he’s pretty sure he’ll never actually have to verbally communicate with anyone ever again if thinks creatively.

His mother plops herself down next to his face, and Jean scrunches his nose at the intensity of her floral perfume, “Jeanbo” she says, “You’ll be okaaay.”

Jean drags his hand down his face and flops it down to his side.

“Yeah, ma, I know.”

She doesn’t look like she believes him, in the least, she rolls her eyes, “I’ll make you your favorite omelet for breakfast, how about it?” she mutters. 

Jean groans again and nods at her once. As if he’ll turn down those omelets if they’ve been offered to him just like that.

His father wobbles around awkwardly for a second or two, before coming to stand beside his mother and scratching the stubble on his face.

“Jean, if you need any more books, just text me their names and I’ll have one of my guys send them over to you straight away, alright?” Jean nods again. Paul Kirschtein has this habit of pampering his son by making most things easier for him than they should be, and it doesn’t seem to disappear with time or age. Not that Jean can complain, most of the time; being an only child has some advantages, but it also means all their expectations are piled onto one person. 

Thankfully, his father has never urged Jean to take over the family business after him, or things could have been difficult. He’s been pretty lucky as far as his life at home is concerned. Pretty darned lucky.

Jean nods again, and pushes himself onto his elbows so he can look his parents in the eye.

“I’m alright.” he insists, and he is. 

They both look at him speculatively and decide to believe him.

“I remember I cried when _I_ had to leave for college”, muses his father, tracing his jawline, “But that was because I wouldn’t see my family for another four years and college was in another country.”

He doesn’t even have to say that in a snarky tone for it to be teasing. Magali scowls at him, and Jean just shakes his head.

“I’m not crying, dad.”

“I’m aware, son.”

Jean snorts and sits up straight, running a hand through his hair and worrying his lip. He takes a good look around him, at his room, and his folks looking at him expectantly. 

“Well,” he says, pursing his lips, “It’s getting late now, and I’d better sleep if I’m going to be up early, tomorrow.” He pats his thighs and jumps off the bed, hands on his hips.

His father smirks, and throws a hand onto Jean’s shoulder, “I’ll be leaving for Indonesia before you wake up, kid.” he says, “You’ll meet me straight this weekend, if you decide to come home.”

“Of-course he will, won’t you, Jeanbo?” his mother has now stood up, and she brushes away the creases in her dress.

Paul smiles at her knowingly, “Either way, good luck, Jean. Tell me if you find yourself a girlfriend.” His father pats his shoulder twice and retracts his hand.

 

_Or boyfriend, dad. I might get me one of those._

 

His mother mumbles something about ‘focusing on studies’ and ‘good grades’ but it gets lost somewhere on the way to their ears from her mouth. She and Paul wish Jean their ‘goodnight’s and ‘goodbye’s respectively and Magali does so with an almost bone-crushing hug that has Jean rubbing his shoulders in pain long after he’s closed the door behind them.

He turns to the mirror again, slaps himself on both his cheeks and puffs his chest out. He’s starting to doubt that outfit he picked out for tomorrow, now. He should probably just brush and get to bed before he starts doubting his own face – the longer he looks at himself, the more hideous he seems. 

He knows it’s not true, and that he’s devilishly handsome, of course… it’s just some stupid, temporary, thing.

Right, well, he’d better not look at himself too long. Gotta long drive to make with a certain fussy brunet in the morning, can’t spend the rest of the night hating himself. There’s a university to get to, a dorm room to find, documents to get checked.

 

 

He’d better not get lost on campus.

 

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Jean gets lost on campus.

 

Of course he does. What else could’ve happened? Murphy’s Law and all that, right? 

Fucking. Hell.

To hell with everything.

He’d gotten up right on time, had the goddamned amazing omelet, gotten dressed and shaved and packed all the last minute stuff despite the battle cries in his veins, survived yet another bone-crushing hug and perhaps a hundred or so well wishes from his mother, driven off to Eren’s, extracted that bastard from the arms of his doting parents and sister, made it all the way to the Uni with them both in one piece despite how _much_ that shit-head talks when he’s nervous and how Jean can’t function without the damn GPS, he’d parked the car in the right spot _and_ he’d managed to get all the documents looked over and fucking _everything_ was going swell.

And then he got the fuck lost.

Just like that.

The short grump in the office even _told_ him how to get to the building, but he _still_ got lost. And Eren had gone off in a different direction to some fucking Pixie building or something. Pixis, whatever. Jean would never have imagined he’d miss that face so much, but he does, he misses it so much.

Still, he hopes Eren got lost, too, and that he’s wandering around the place trying not to look like he has because that’s exactly what Jean’s doing. He can’t _possibly_ ask any of the people around him for directions because of how much of a tool he’d look like. It’s a damn struggle, okay?

Well, to be honest, Trost U is… _large_ , to say the least. It’s got so many different buildings for its different classes and sections, and so many lawns and courts, and thus so many different paths to go by. It’s beautiful and everything, the campus, the building are multi colored, some of them even have some pretty wall art on them and the gardens are all lovely, but there are other things on his mind. He’s pretty sure he’s going around in circles; he’s passed the cafeteria twice, now.

All these students around him probably think he’s useless by this point. But he is, he really should’ve just checked the damn map and stopped being so damn fussy about what the ‘right’ way to get to his room would’ve been. This is no quest of honor, he just needs to get to the room and get his damn stuff unpacked and get himself settled. 

He’s not even nervous any more, he’s just _pissed_. At _himself._

He snaps about 20 minutes into his journey and whips out the map when he’s before the cafeteria again, with nothing on his mind but rage and this Dormitory Shadis that he needs to get to. And he just about punches his own face when he realizes how much easier this makes things.

 

_That’s it, Jean. You’re an idiot._

 

It’s the second left from the cafeteria, and then a right, if he goes straight from here. He does, he wastes absolutely no more time, but he tucks the map away quickly, as if he’s trying to pretend he somehow figured this out on his own. But he should have been able to, there’s like signs and stuff all around here.

What the _hell_ has he been doing for 20 minutes, exactly? 

Fuck-all. That’s what.

He just about barrels past students in his hurry, luggage and all, with a terrible scowl on his face and murder in his eyes, and no one bothers him. Thank god. Jean has not walked around this much since the time his father took him suit shopping in New York two years ago and couldn’t settle on one goddamn store.

Finally, _finally_ , he reaches the building. His insides untangle immediately, and feeling of not-fucking-up something fills his chest. He steps into the dulling blue dorm purposefully, and looks around the lobby for a building map and finds it pinned up on a notice board to his right. The desk next to the door is unoccupied, at the moment, but several of the room doors are open up ahead and he can hear people bustling inside them. A head of short blonde hair pops out of one of the doors and looks around nervously until their blue eyes lock with Jean’s, and the kid pops right back in nervously. Alright, Jean doesn’t want to talk to anyone either, he turns back to the blueprint.

Room 204, okay. Second floor. Great. There’s an elevator straight ahead. Awesome.

Jean hadn’t been able to see the room when he’d come by earlier to see the campus, they’d just taken a small tour into the library and seen some of the classrooms, but he’d been told he’d have a fair view of the garden from his room. This dorm was supposed to be pretty rad, or so the student reviews had said, and he’d have his own bathroom, too. The pictures had looked pretty alright, but you can’t really rely on those that often, can you?

He pulls his suitcase with him into the elevator, and struggles with the urge to hit his head against the metal whilst it moves up slowly, hoping that all the stuff he’d sent with one of his father’s assistants before would be there in the room. Now that he doesn’t have a reason to be angry, it’s all just anxiety again, but he’ll be fine within a day or two.

The elevator stops on the second floor with a _ding_ and Jean hauls himself out onto the grey carpeted corridor with a huff. According to the blueprint, the room should be by the end of the corridor, to his right, he has to drag his stuff there all the way and it’s not like his arms are dealing well with all this exercise he put them through. 

As it was downstairs, the second floor is full of voices that stand in contrast to the almost annoying quiet he’s used at home. The walls are beige and bland, the paint peeling and covered in black scratches here and there. Jean spots two 6 foot something and burly looking guys in fading blue Trost U hoodies talking with their backs to the wall, a short cropped blonde head and a neatly combed black one. The shorter blonde notices Jean, much to his grumpy dismay, and waves at him with an overwhelming smile and an ‘Ayyyy, Freshman!’ in a deep rumbling voice. His taller friend smiles sheepishly at Jean and rubs the back of his neck. The blonde begins to walk towards Jean with his hands in his hoodie pockets and the shy dudefollows.

You know, whilst Jean had been worrying about his classes and room and that pretty freckled boy, Mark…what he really should have been worrying about was how he’d deal with people who’d want to interact with him.

Jean doesn’t think scowling at them would be a good idea, no matter how much he wants to or how it’s practically standard routine for him, so he gapes at them, like a scandalized grandma. It doesn’t stop them, however, because the blonde with the body of damn wrestler and his relatively lanky bronze skinned friend walk straight up to him like he might as well have called them over. 

The blonde is bouncing on the balls of his feet, grinning, as he sticks his hand out towards Jean, “I’m Reiner,” he says pointing at himself, and jerks a thumb back toward his companion, “and that’s my boy Bertholdt.” Bertholdt flushes pink, for no apparent reason, and looks to be just as uncomfortable with this interaction as Jean feels. He doesn’t respond to the hand before him for moment, his fingers lingering on the straps of his rucksack, and when he does, it’s a hesitant and halfhearted handshake that Reiner returns with two firm jerks that almost yank Jean of his feet.

“We don’t really room in Shadis, we’re just here helpin’ our buddy Franz,” Reiner jerks his chin to the open door they’d been hanging near and, as if on cue, someone inside (Franz?) howls in pain. Bertholdt winces, and Reiner calls out to Franz to ask if he’s alright.

“I’m- I’m OKAY, guys! Don’t come in, yet!” Franz shouts back in a voice thick with his German accent, also pain.

Reiner nods and turns to Jean, Bertholdt eyes Franz’s door suspiciously but says nothing of it.

“We could help you out with your stuff while we wait for our mysterious friend.” Reiner offers, and then realizes he doesn’t even know the name of the guy he just offered to help. 

He looks like he’s about to ask him, so Jean gathers his balls and beats him to it.

“I, uh, I’m Jean.” he says, running a hand through his hair. Reiner grins, and Jean doesn’t exactly refuse their help when Reiner pulls heavy suitcase behind Jean as he locates his door. He fumbles around a little with the keys, and Reiner and Bertholdt stand behind him patiently until he unlocks it and pushes it open. Jean wonders if these people can actually be this nice if they don’t have any incentive. 

And he did read on the internet that he shouldn’t trust anyone but himself with his luggage…

Shit.

Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe they beat him up in his own room and run away with his stuff. Why the hell did Jean have to be so careless? Okay maybe them beating him up here and stealing his belongings isn’t as likely a possibility as he made it sound, but, like, this could still be bad.

Jean panics a little and keeps glancing back at the two, Bertholdt trailing awkwardly after Reiner into his room. He doesn’t _immediately_ say it, but he’s always had troubles with his mental filter.

“Please don’t runawaywithmystuff.” he blurts without thinking, too jittery to even look around at the room he’s in, eyes trained on Reiner, who’s jaw falls open, eyebrows shooting up.

Him and Bertholdt stare at Jean wordlessly for a second, and then Berthold giggles. He fucking giggles. And then Reiner follows right after.

Jean has an extremely tall and sweaty guy, and his hunky friend, who could both possibly be evil, giggling in his room. Wonderful. Fucking great.

“You know,” Bertholdt breathes in between chuckles, and Jean realizes that this is the first time he’s spoken to him, “You really would have no chance against us if Reiner and I decided to scram with your suitcase right now.”

Jean’s hand involuntarily reaches for the handle of his suitcase. Reiner laughs some more, and reaches out to ruffle his friend’s hair affectionately.

“You’re making it worse, Bertl.”he says to him, and then to Jean, “We won’t take your stuff, buddy, we ain’t no thieves. But good going being cautious and all that!”

Jean feels the blood rush to his cheeks, and he splutters an apology with his eyes on the straps of his sack. Reiner dismisses it with the wave of his palm and pats Jean roughly on the back.

“It’s alright, Freshie. We’ll just leave you to it, now, but you’ll see us around, yeah?”

“Th-thanks.” Jean mutters under his breath, to the retreating backs of Reiner and Bertholdt, who are still smiling.

Reiner hears him, and Jean doesn’t know whether or not that’s a good thing, and whips his head back and asks, “What was that? You need more help?” 

“N-no, uh…” Jean says, louder, this time, “Just, um, thanks. And sorry, again.”

“It’s no problem, seriously. We’ll see you, Jean!” Bertholdt smiles at him reassuringly.

Jean offers them a firm nod and both of them leave the room to head to Franz. Jean quickly shuts the door behind them.

He takes in a deep breath and exhales it slowly through his nose, back against the white of the door. 

He’d read, on the same website that told him to be wary of strangers handling his stuff, that he should leave his door open on his first day in college; so that people can stop by and be friendly or whatever. But, he really doesn’t want to end up talking to anyone else, at the moment, and he doesn’t want to be disrupted whilst he unpacks. Also that he probably couldn’t stand embarrassing himself like he just did…

Jean shakes his head, and looks around him at last.

The room is pretty alright, about three fourths the size of his bedroom, its tiles look the same as home and the walls share their color with the ones in the corridor, except these are more damaged. Jean thinks he spots a messily scrawled note on the wall by the socket where the small TV is plugged in, but it could just be a scratch. There’s a bed to his left that could fit about three people as scrawny as himself, if you squeezed them together, and a window right ahead of him with navy blue panes and curtains. The desk next to the TV stand doesn’t look very sturdy, but he’ll have to make do. 

The cupboard beside the bed seems like it’s an okay size, there’s a mirror, too, and his minifridge is right by the TV.

Well, the pictures were pretty accurate, for once. Except they didn’t have his his minifridge and suitcase, obviously.

He had to pay so much extra for this place, but it’s probably going to be worth it.

Jean unpacks hastily, thanking his past self for having folded everything properly so that putting everything in its place in the creaky brown cupboard is easier than it could’ve been. He puts all his stuff in the right place; his art stuff and books on the desk or the shelves above it, and hopes it will all _stay_ in its place, for whatever time to come. It’s unlikely that any of this will stay this organized for more than three days, though. He pins up the wall décor on the wall by his bed, trying to arrange them neatly and evenly so he doesn’t look like a messy looser to whoever he manages to bring in here.

He sort of is, but they don’t have to know that.

Finally, he steps back to the door to look at his handiwork, munching on a granola bar he didn’t tuck away in. He’s done a good enough job, it looks pretty homely, and he really can see the garden, and also a good part of the university, from this room.

It’s nice. He likes it.

It’s about time he call up his mom and tell her he’s settled in, and ring Eren just to see how his rooming process is going.

He pulls his phone out of his jeans pocket and draws in his passcode. Damn, it’s like 1:30 pm. His mother is going to throw a fit. He was supposed to call her like three hours ago or something.

Magali Kirschtein picks up on the second ring, and begins talking before her son can even greet her.

“Jeanbo, I told you to call as soon as you found the room. I have been worrying for all these hours, and your dad called and I didn’t know what to tell him and I came _this close_ to calling up the University and making them get you on the phone but then I called Eren and that lovely boy told me you two were fine and that you were probably in your room and- “

“Mom, breathe. I’m fine, I forgot to call you and I just got everything fix– ’’

“What do you mean you _forgot_? I’ve been waiting on you all day! I couldn’t even have lunch properly when break came around and I’ve been yelling at all the poor people around me because my boy won’t give me ring and tell me he’s alive!”

Jean’s mother has always been wildly protective of her son. Always the first to call if Jean was late coming back from school, or if he stayed out so much as a minute past his curfew. This assault is nothing new to Jean. He sighs, and hits his head against the wall.

“I was nervous, ma! I could hardly remember I had luggage, let alone I was supposed to call you. And you never get this anxious even when I go out or anything, jeez.”

“Did you lose anything? Jean, seriously, this is your first day there and you’ve already managed to- ’’

“No, ma. I’ve got everything.”

“Did you put all the food in the right place? You better have kept the fruits in the fridge because you _know_ they spoil and you have to keep everything organized because you always lose things and we can’t have that. Also-’’

“Ma, I’m not five. I know.” This is getting increasingly annoying, but he really did expect it.

“…I’m sorry, Jeanbo, you know me. Are you sure everything’s okay? All your stuff is there?” His mother’s tone softens to something that doesn’t threaten to rip apart his ear drums, and she so much as pauses politely for his answer.

“Yeah, mom. I’m all good.”

Magali sighs out of relief, “I’m really glad, Jean. Now get yourself something to eat, and call up Eren. He said you weren’t answering his calls either and he needs to talk to you. He wouldn’t say about what.”

“What?” Jean asks, and he puts the call on loudspeaker whilst he checks his log and, sure enough, five missed calls from his mother and another three from Eren. How did he miss all of these?

“I’m going to call you back in the evening, okay, sweetie? Take care of yourself or I’ll come there and do it for you. I swear I will, Jeanbo.” He doesn’t even doubt it. His ma would fly here in an instant if she got wind that her son had done anything as scandalous as forgetting to floss or, god forbid, skipping a shower.

“Yes, ma, I’ll be fine. Stop worrying so much.”

“Alright.” Jean hears a door shutting as she moves out of wherever she had gone to talk to him, “I’ll tell your dad you’re okay. Good bye, Jeanbo!”

“Good bye, ma. Love you.” he says, because as annoying as those angry rants can get, he’s glad he has someone in his life who cares about him this much.

“Love you too, kid.” he can almost hear the smile in his mother’s words before she cuts the call and leaves him to the silence of his room, spoilt only by the slightly subdued noises from outside.

He sits himself down on his bed and picks at the loose threads on the black jeans he’d so particularly selected for this very day as he dials up Eren. He probably wants to talk about his roommate, or his room, and say something or the other that’s meant to make Jean regret his decision to get one alone. If there’s one thing Eren Jaeger specializes in, it’s being annoyingly relentless.

He prepared himself for the onslaught he’s sure is to come, and Eren picks up in just three seconds.

What he doesn’t prepare himself for, is the hushed and careful voice of a boy he’s so accustomed to hear yelling.

“Jean.” Eren whispers into the receiver. He sounds a little shaken, and Jean is worried because his usual greeting is often a curse.

“Eren Jaeger. Sup? Mom said you called.” he says, trying not to let his concern show but it comes out anyway. Eren whispering must mean an emergency. 

“Um. Yeah… I just had something to, uh, tell you.” Eren’s voice increases in volume, and he sounds like he’s walking to someplace. Jean can hear the muted chatter of people around him. Is he outside? “Can you, like, come out to meet me or something?” Eren asks.

This is weird. Why is Eren asking to meet him? Did he loose something? Does he want to run away? Is going to tell Jean he’s love with him or something? Because that would be weird, and Jean would have no idea how to not cringe.

“Dude, what’s wrong?” says Jean, using his shoulder to press the phone against his ear whilst he tugs at the hem of his shirt.

Eren still appears to be walking, and he huffs when he finally reaches where he’d intended to be, and when he answers, his voice is in its regular volume, but still hesitant, “It’s about my roommate.”, he says.

“Right.” Jean isn’t sure what to think. Is Eren’s roommate a serial killer? Did he Eren accidentally kill his roommate and now has to hide the body? Goddamit, Jean is not in the mood to deal with this shit.

“Yeah…so, uh, you remember his name, Jean?”

 

_Huh?_

 

“Vaguely, I guess? Some Italian Ink blot? Butt? Something with M? Didn’t you called him Mario Kart for an entire week?” Jean answers, but he really doesn’t see how he remembering Eren’s roommate’s name has anything to do with anything.

Eren pauses, and sighs into the receiver like Jean is some toddler he’s trying to explain Quantum Physics to.

“Well…close enough. Just, um…well- Marco. Marco Bodt. That’s his name.” Eren sounds like he’s taking extra efforts to be careful, which is the weirdest thing Jean has ever heard.

“Okay, so your problematic roommate’s called Marco. What about him.”

“Right, uh. What I mean to say is- uh. Okay, you’re going to kill me and Mikasa is going to give you a slow death for it but, um… you remember that boy Mark? The one you were staring at just yesterday?”

Jean’s heart flutters a little, but there’s a heavy feeling in his stomach that tells him he doesn’t like where this one’s going. But this could be great! If Marco knows, or is related to Mark in any way…then Jean could say hi! Or try to say hi, if he can keep his cool.

“Of-course I remember.” Says Jean, because how can you forget someone that _gorgeous_ , anyway, “What about him?” 

“Yeah. Uh. You remember how I joked about how you and he could have been roommates if you hadn’t been a dick?”

Jean sighs, but he feels butterflies fluttering away in his stomach. Is Eren trying to tell him that Mark needs a roommate? Could it be that Eren is doing something _nice_ for true love? No, it can’t be. What if Marco is dating Mark? They sound like a terrible couple, Jean hates it. Jean and Mark sound way better.

“Eren, this really isn’t the time for you to get all up in my-“

“Jean. Mike was wrong, Mark’s name isn’t- well it’s not _Mark_.”

 

_Oh no. Oh fucking no._

_This cannot be happening. This cannot be going where I think this is going._

_This is impossible. Eren is playing me. Eren is an asshole._

_This is all a prank._

_It has to be._

 

“Jean” Eren says, slowly, and it takes every bit of Jean’s willpower to not yell at him, “Mark is- well, I mean- that boy you like, he’s…Mark is Marco.”

The weight in Jean’s stomach drops, and his desire to have his fingers pressed hard around Eren’s throat shoots up 50 times over.

“Nononono. Eren, don’t joke around, are you really fucking serio-“

“ _Jean_.” 

“Eren, you really cannot expect me to believe that-”

“ _JEAN_.”

“Although I’m gonna have to admit you’ve been pretty creati-“

“ _Your Mark is my bloody roommate, Jean. And I’ll send you a fucking picture if you don’t fucking believe me._ ”

Eren’s tone is assertive, dead serious, something he’s probably picked up from Mikasa. 

Jean Kirschtein takes a deep breath, and he lets it out nice and slow. He runs his palms down his face, his nails scratching along the skin, and massages his temple once, twice.

Eren wasn’t joking.

Eren’s roommate is the possible love of Jean’s life.

Eren Jaeger is _going to be sleeping in the same room with JEAN’S guy_.

 

_This is an extreme violation of the Bro Code._

_Of any code **ever**._

 

Eren Jaeger is a dead man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #ErenIsInnocent2k15  
> (well done making it through, soldier!)

**Author's Note:**

> Whew that was long.  
> Please yell at me here, on my [tumblr](http://fitried.tumblr.com/) or my [twitter](https://twitter.com/fitried_) because I'm still freaking out about this.  
> (thanks for making it through <3)


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